JOSEPH  PUl 


SCENCES  OF  A  SECRETARY 

BY 

RELAND 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


EX  LIBRIS 
ERNEST  CARROLL  MOORE 


THE    SARGENT    PORTRAIT    OF   JOSEPH    PULITZER, 
PAINTED    IN    1907 


JOSEPH  PULITZER 

REMINISCENCES    OF    A 
SECRETARY 


BY 

ALLEYNE  IRELAND 


NEW  YORK 

MITCHELL   KENNERLEY 

MCMXIV 


Copyright  igi4  by 
Mitchell  Kennerley 


DEDICATED 

BY  KIND   PERMISSION 

AND 

WITH  SINCERE   REGARDS 

TO 

MRS.  JOSEPH  PULITZER 


865145 


PREFACE 

A  FEW  words  of  explanation  are  necessary 
in  regard  to  these  reminiscences  of  the  late 
Joseph  Pulitzer. 

The  present  volume  is  in  no  sense  a  biog- 
raphy of  that  extraordinary  man.  It  is 
merely  an  accurate  and  somewhat  detailed 
account  of  my  experiences  as  a  subordinate 
member  of  the  personal  staff  which  was  al- 
ways in  attendance  upon  him. 

Only  one  side  of  a  singularly  rich  and  com- 
plex nature  is  disclosed  in  these  pages — ^the 
side  which  he  turned  to  a  new  secretary.  It 
is  to  be  hoped  that  someone  who  knew  him 
intimately  and  for  a  long  time  will  supple- 
ment this  record  by  a  work  which  will  do  jus- 
tice to  the  varied  and  remarkable  qualities  of 
one  of  the  most  vigorous,  picturesque,  and 
original  personahties  that  ever  played  a  part 
in  the  interesting  drama  of  American  public 
life. 

•  • 

Vll 


viii  PREFACE 

I  wish  to  express  my  sense  of  indebtedness 
to  Mrs.  Joseph  Pulitzer,  to  Mr.  Harold 
Stanley  Pollard,  and  to  Mr.  Norman  G. 
Thwaites  for  their  permission  to  use  the  vari- 
ous pictures  of  Mr.  Pulitzer  reproduced  in 
this  book. 

Alleyne  Ireland 

New  York,  March,  1914. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  Text  p^Qjj 

I.  In  a  Casting  Net  9 

II.  Meeting  Joseph  Pulitzer  39 

III.  Life  at  Cap  Martin  71 

IV.  Yachting  in  the  Mediterranean  103 

V.  Getting  to  Know  Mr.  Puhtzer  142 

VI.  Wiesbaden    and     an    Atlantic 

Voyage  176 

VII.  Bar  Harbor  and  the  Last  Cruise  211 

Illustrations 

The  Sargent  portrait  of  Joseph  Pulit- 
zer, painted  in  1907  Frontispiece 

Joseph  Pulitzer  at  the  age  of  thirty-  ^^"^^ 
four  42 

Joseph  Pulitzer  at  Monte  Carlo,  1911        94 

Joseph  Puhtzer  and  one  of  his  secre- 
taries on  the  deck  of  the  "Liberty"       104 

Joseph  Pulitzer  listening  to  the  morn- 
ing's news  on  the  "Liberty"  124 

Joseph  Pulitzer  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
three  172 

Joseph  Pulitzer  in  1906,  taken  on  the 
train  between  London  and  Dover         178 

Joseph  Pulitzer  in  1902,  riding  in  Cen- 
tral Park  with  a  secretary  218 


CHAPTER   I 

In  a  Casting  Net 

ALONG  illness,  a  longer  convalescence, 
a  positive  injunction  from  my  doc- 
tor to  leave  friends  and  business  asso- 
ciates and  to  seek  some  spot  where  a  com- 
fortable bed  and  good  food  could  be  had 
in  convenient  proximity  to  varied  but  mild 
forms  of  amusement — and  I  found  myself 
in  the  autumn  of  the  year  1910  free  and 
alone  in  the  dehghtful  city  of  Hamburg. 

All  my  plans  had  gone  down  wind,  and 
as  I  sat  at  my  table  in  the  Cafe  Ziechen, 
whence,  against  the  background  of  the  glit- 
tering blue  of  the  Alster,  I  could  see  the 
busy  life  of  the  Alter  Jungfernstieg  and 
the  Alsterdamm,  my  thoughts  turned  nat- 
urally to  the  future. 

9 


10  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

It  is  not  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to 
reconstruct  at  forty  years  of  age  the  whole 
scheme  of  your  life;  but  my  illness,  and 
other  happenings  of  a  highly  disagreeable 
character,  had  compelled  me  to  abandon  a 
career  to  which  I  had  devoted  twenty  years 
of  arduous  labor;  and  the  question  which 
pressed  for  an  immediate  answer  was :  What 
are  you  going  to  do  now? 

Various  alternatives  presented  themselves. 
There  had  been  a  suggestion  that  I  should 
take  the  editorship  of  a  newspaper  in  Cal- 
cutta; an  important  financial  house  in  Lon- 
don had  offered  me  the  direction  of  its  in- 
terests in  Western  Canada;  a  post  in  the 
service  of  the  Government  of  India  had 
been  mentioned  as  a  possibility  by  certain 
persons  in  authority. 

My  own  inclination,  the  child  of  a  weary 
spirit  and  of  the  lassitude  of  ill  health, 
swayed  me  in  the  direction  of  a  quiet  re- 
treat in  Barbados,  that  peaceful  island  of 
an  eternal  summer  cooled  by  the  northeast 
trades,  where  the  rush  and  turmoil  of  mod- 
ern life  are  unknown  and  where  a  very 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  11 

modest  income  more  than  suffices  for  all  the 
needs  of  a  simple  existence. 

I  shall  never  know  to  what  issue  my  reflec- 
tions upon  these  matters  would  have  led  me, 
for  a  circumstance,  in  the  last  degree  trivial, 
intervened  to  turn  my  thoughts  into  an  en- 
tirely new  channel,  and  to  guide  me,  though 
I  could  not  know  it  at  the  time,  into  the 
service  of  Joseph  PuUtzer. 

My  waiter  was  extremely  busy  serving  a 
large  party  of  artillery  officers  at  an  adjoin- 
ing table.  I  glanced  through  The  Times 
and  the  Hamburger  N achricliten,  looked  out 
for  a  while  upon  the  crowded  street,  and 
then,  resigning  myself  to  the  delay  in  get- 
ting my  lunch,  picked  up  The  Times  again 
and  did  what  I  had  never  done  before  in  my 
life — read  the  advertisements  under  the  head 
"Professional  Situations." 

All  except  one  were  of  the  usual  type,  the 
kind  in  which  a  prospective  employer  flat- 
ters a  prospective  employee  by  classing  as 
"professional"  the  services  of  a  type^vriter 
or  of  a  companion  to  an  elderly  gentleman 


12  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

who  resides  within  easy  distance  of  an  im- 
portant provincial  town. 

One  advertisement,  however,  stood  out 
from  the  rest  on  account  of  the  peculiar  re- 
quirements set  forth  in  its  terse  appeal.  It 
ran  something  after  this  fashion:  "Wanted, 
an  intelligent  man  of  about  middle  age, 
widely  read,  widely  traveled,  a  good  sailor, 
as  companion-secretary  to  a  gentleman. 
Must  be  prepared  to  live  abroad.  Good  sal- 
ary.   Apply,  etc." 

My  curiosity  was  aroused;  and  at  first 
sight  I  appeared  to  meet  the  requirements  in 
a  reasonable  measure.  I  had  certainly  trav- 
eled widely,  and  I  was  an  excellent  sailor — 
excellent  to  the  point  of  ofFensiveness. 
Upon  an  unfavorable  construction  I  could 
claim  to  be  middle-aged  at  forty ;  and  I  was 
prepared  to  live  abroad  in  the  unlikely  event 
of  any  one  fixing  upon  a  country  which 
could  be  properly  called  "abroad"  from  the 
standpoint  of  a  man  who  had  not  spent 
twelve  consecutive  months  in  any  place  since 
he  was  fifteen  years  old. 

As  for  intelligence,  I  reflected  that  for 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  13 

ninety-nine  people  out  of  a  hundred  intelli- 
gence in  others  means  no  more  than  the  dis- 
covery of  a  person  who  is  in  intellectual  ac- 
quiescence with  themselves,  and  that  if  the 
necessity  arose  I  could  probably  affect  an 
acquiescence  which  would  serve  all  the  pur- 
poses of  a  fundamental  identity  of  convic- 
tions. 

Two  things,  however,  suggested  possible 
difficulties,  the  questions  of  what  interpreta- 
tions the  advertiser  placed  upon  the  terms 
"widely  read"  and  "good  salary."  I  could 
not  claim  to  be  widely  read  in  any  conven- 
tional sense,  for  I  was  not  a  university  grad- 
uate, and  the  very  extensive  reading  I  had 
done  in  my  special  line  of  study — the  control 
and  development  of  tropical  dependencies — 
though  it  might  entitle  me  to  some  considera- 
tion as  a  student  in  that  field  had  left  me 
woefully  ignorant  of  general  literature. 
Would  the  ability  to  discuss  with  intelligence 
the  Bengal  Regulation  of  1818,  or  the  Brit- 
ish Guiana  Immigration  Ordinance  of  1891 
be  welcomed  as  a  set-off  to  a  complete  un- 
familiarity    with    Milton's    "Comus"    and 


14  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

Gladstone's  essay  on  the  epithets  of  motion 
in  Homer? 

On  the  subject  of  what  constituted  a 
"good  salary"  experience  had  taught  me 
to  expect  a  very  wide  divergence  of  view, 
not  only  along  the  natural  line  of  cleavage 
between  the  person  paying  and  the  person 
receiving  the  salary,  but  also  between  one 
employer  and  another  and  between  one  em- 
ployee and  another;  and  I  recalled  a  story, 
told  me  in  my  infancy,  in  which  a  certain 
British  laboring  man  had  been  heard  to  re- 
mark that  he  would  not  be  the  Czar  of  Rus- 
sia, no,  not  for  thirty  shillings  a  week.  But 
that  element  in  the  situation  might,  I  re- 
flected, very  well  be  left  to  take  care  of  it- 
self. 

I  finished  my  lunch,  and  then  replied  to 
the  advertisement,  giving  my  English  ad- 
dress. My  letter,  a  composition  bred  of  the 
conflicting  influences  of  pride,  modesty, 
prudence,  and  curiosity,  brought  forth  in  due 
course  a  brief  reply  in  which  I  was  bidden 
to  an  interview  in  that  part    of  London 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  15 

where  fashion  and  business  prosperity  seek 
to  ape  each  other. 

Upon  presenting  myself  at  the  appointed 
hour  I  was  confronted  by  a  gentleman 
whose  severity  of  manner  I  learned  later  to 
recognize  as  the  useful  mask  to  a  singularly 
genial  and  kindly  nature. 

Our  interview  was  long  and,  to  me  at 
any  rate,  rather  emban-assing,  since  it  re- 
solved itself  into  a  searching  cross-exami- 
nation by  a  past-master  in  the  art.  Who 
were  my  parents?  When  and  where  had 
I  been  born?  Where  had  I  been  educated? 
What  were  my  means  of  livelihood?  What 
positions  had  I  filled  since  I  went  out  into 
the  world?  What  countries  had  I  visited? 
What  books  had  I  read?  What  books  had 
I  written?  To  what  magazines  and  re- 
views had  I  contributed?  Who  were  my 
friends?  Was  I  fond  of  music,  of  paint- 
ing, of  the  drama?  Had  I  a  sense  of 
humor?  Had  I  a  good  temper  or  a  good 
control  of  a  bad  one?  ^-NHiat  languages 
could  I  speak  or  read?  Did  I  enjoy  good 
health?     Was  I  of  a  nervous  disposition? 


16  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

Had  I  tact  and  discretion?  Was  I  a  good 
horseman,  a  good  sailor,  a  good  talker,  a 
good  reader? 

When  it  came  to  asking  me  whether  I 
was  a  good  horseman  and  a  good  sailor,  I 
realized  that  anyone  who  expected  to  find 
these  two  qualities  combined  in  one  man 
was  quite  capable  of  demanding  that  his 
companion-secretary  should  be  able  to  knit 
woollen  socks,  wi'ite  devotional  verse,  and 
compute  the  phases  of  the  moon. 

I  remember  chuckling  to  myself  over  this 
quaint  conceit;  I  was  to  learn  later  that  it 
came  unpleasantly  near  the  truth. 

Under  this  close  examination  I  felt  that 
I  had  made  rather  a  poor  showing.  This 
was  due  in  some  measure,  no  doubt,  to  the 
fact  that  my  questioner  abruptly  left  any 
topic  as  soon  as  he  discovered  that  I  knew 
something  about  it,  and  began  to  angle 
around,  with  disturbing  success,  to  find  the 
things  I  did  not  know  about. 

At  one  point,  however,  I  scored  a  hit. 
After  I  had  been  put  through  my  paces,  a 
process  which  seemed  to  me  to  end  only  at 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  17 

the  exact  point  where  my  questioner  could 
no  longer  remember  the  name  of  anything 
in  the  universe  about  which  he  could  frame 
an  interrogation,  it  was  my  turn  to  ask 
questions. 

Was  the  person  I  was  addressing  the  gen- 
tleman who  needed  the  companion? 

No,  he  was  merely  his  agent.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact  the  person  on  whose  behalf  he 
was  acting  was  an  American. 

I  nodded  in  a  non-committal  way. 

He  was  also  a  millionaire. 

I  bowed  the  kind  of  bow  that  a  French- 
man makes  when  he  says  3Iais  parfaite- 
ment. 

Furthermore  he  was  totally  blind. 

"Joseph  Pulitzer,"  I  said. 

"How  in  the  world  did  you  guess  that?" 
asked  my  companion. 

"That  wasn't  a  guess,"  I  replied.  "You 
advertised  for  an  intelligent  man;  and  this 
is  simply  where  my  intelligence  commences 
to  show  itself.  An  intelligent  man  couldn't 
live  as  long  as  I  have  in  the  United  States 
without  hearing  a  good  deal  about  Joseph 


18  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

Pulitzer;  and,  after  all,  the  country  isn't 
absolutely  overrun  with  blind  millionaires." 

At  the  close  of  the  interview  I  was  told 
that  I  would  be  reported  upon.  In  the 
meantime  would  I  kindly  send  in  a  written 
account  of  the  intei-view,  in  the  fullest  pos- 
sible detail,  as  a  test  of  my  memory,  sense 
of  accuracy,  and  literary  style. 

'Nor  was  this  all.  As  I  i)repared  to  take 
my  departure  I  was  handed  the  address  of 
another  gentleman  who  would  also  examine 
me  and  make  a  report.  Before  I  got  out 
of  the  room  my  inquisitor  said,  "It  may  in- 
terest you  to  know  that  we  have  had  more 
than  six  hundred  applications  for  the  post, 
and  that  it  may,  therefore,  take  some  time 
before  the  matter  is  definitely  settled." 

I  was  appalled.  Evidently  I  had  been 
wasting  my  time,  for  I  could  have  no  doubt 
that  the  gallant  six  hundred  would  include 
a  sample  of  every  kind  of  pundit,  stationary 
or  vagrant,  encompassed  within  the  seven 
seas ;  and  against  such  competition  I  felt  my 
chances  to  be  just  precise^  nothing. 

My  companion  observed  my  discomfiture. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  19 

and  as  he  shook  hands  he  said,  "Oh,  that 
doesn't  really  mean  very  much.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  we  were  able  to  throw  out  more  than 
G^ve  hundred  and  fifty  applications  merely 
for  self-evident  reasons.  A  number  of 
school  teachers  and  bank  clerks  applied,  and 
in  general  these  gentlemen  said  that  al- 
though they  had  not  traveled  they  would 
have  no  objection  to  living  abroad,  and  that 
they  might  venture  to  hope  that  if  they  did 
go  to  sea  they  would  prove  to  be  good  sail- 
ors. 

"Most  of  them  appeared  to  think  that  the 
circumstance  of  being  middle-aged  would 
off -set  their  deficiencies  in  other  directions. 
There  are  really  only  a  few  gentlemen  whom 
we  can  consider  as  being  likely  to  meet  Mr. 
Pulitzer's  requirements,  and  the  selection 
will  be  made  finally  by  INIr.  Pulitzer  him- 
self. It  is  very  probable  that  you  will  be 
asked  to  go  to  Mentone  to  spend  a  fort- 
night or  so  on  Mr.  Pulitzer's  yacht  or  at 
his  villa  at  Cap  Martin,  as  he  never  engages 
anybody  until  he  has  had  the  candidate  with 
him  for  a  short  visit. 


20  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

"And,  by  the  way,  would  you  mind  writ- 
ing a  short  nan-ative  of  your  hfe,  not  more 
than  two  thousand  words?  It  would  inter- 
est Mr.  Pulitzer  and  would  help  him  to  reach 
a  decision  in  your  case.  You  might  also 
send  me  copies  of  some  of  your  writings." 

Thus  ended  my  interview  with  Mr.  James 
M.  Tuohy,  the  London  correspondent  of  the 
New  York  World, 

My  next  step  was  to  call  upon  the  second 
inquisitor,  Mr.  George  Ledlie.  I  found  him 
comfortably  installed  at  an  hotel  in  the  West 
End.  He  was  an  American,  very  courteous 
and  pleasant,  but  evidently  prepared  to  use 
a  probe  without  any  consideration  for  the 
feelings  of  the  victim. 

As  my  business  was  to  reveal  myself,  I 
wasted  no  time,  and  for  about  an  hour  I 
rambled  along  on  the  subject  of  my  Ameri- 
can experiences.  I  do  not  know  to  this  day 
what  sort  of  an  impression  I  created  upon 
this  gentleman,  but  I  felt  at  the  time  that 
it  ought  to  have  been  a  favorable  one. 

We  had  many  friends  in  common;  I  had 
recently  been  offered  a  lectureship  in  the  uni- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  21 

versity  from  which  he  had  graduated;  some 
of  my  books  had  been  pubHshed  in  Amer- 
ica by  firms  in  whose  standing  he  had  con- 
fidence; I  paraded  a  sHght  acquaintance 
with  three  Presidents  of  the  United  States, 
and  produced  from  my  pocketbook  letters 
from  two  of  them;  we  found  that  we  were 
both  respectful  admirers  of  a  charming  lady 
who  had  recently  undergone  a  surgical  oper- 
ation; he  had  been  a  guest  at  my  club  in 
Boston,  I  had  been  a  guest  at  his  club  in 
New  York.  When  I  left  him  I  thought 
poorly  of  the  chances  of  the  remnant  of  the 
six  hundred. 

Some  weeks  passed  and  I  heard  nothing 
more  of  the  matter.  During  this  time  I  had 
leisure  to  think  over  what  I  had  heard  from 
time  to  time  about  Joseph  Pulitzer,  and  to 
speculate,  with  the  aid  of  some  imaginative 
friends,  upon  the  probable  advantages  and 
disadvantages  of  the  position  for  which  I 
was  a  candidate. 

Gathered  together,  my  second-hand  im- 
pressions of  Joseph  Pulitzer  made  little 
more  than  a  hazy  outline.    I  had  heard  or 


22  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

read  that  he  had  landed  in  New  York  In  the 
early  sixties,  a  penniless  youth  unable  to 
speak  a  word  of  English;  that  after  a  re- 
markable series  of  adventures  he  had  be- 
come a  newspaper  proprietor  and,  later,  a 
millionaire;  that  he  had  been  stricken  blind 
at  the  height  of  his  career;  that  his  friends 
and  his  enemies  agreed  in  describing  him  as 
a  man  of  extraordinary  ability  and  of  re- 
markable character;  that  he  had  been  vic- 
torious in  a  bitter  controversy  with  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt;  that  one  of  the  Rothschilds 
had  remarked  that  if  Joseph  Pulitzer  had 
not  lost  his  eyesight  and  his  health  he,  Pulit- 
zer, would  have  collected  into  his  hands  all 
the  money  there  was;  that  he  was  the  sub- 
ject of  one  of  the  noblest  portraits  created 
by  the  genius  of  John  Sargent;  and  that 
he  spent  most  of  his  time  on  board  a  mag- 
nificent yacht,  surrounded  by  a  staff  of  six 
secretaries. 

This  was  enough,  of  course,  to  inspire  me 
with  a  keen  desire  to  meet  Mr.  Pulitzer;  it 
was  not  enough  to  afford  me  the  slightest 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  28 

idea  of  what  life  would  be  like  in  close  per- 
sonal contact  with  such  a  man. 

The  general  opinion  of  my  friends  was 
that  life  with  Mr.  Pulitzer  would  be  one 
long  succession  of  happy,  care-free  days 
spent  along  the  languorous  shores  of  the 
Mediterranean — days  of  which  perhaps  two 
hours  would  be  devoted  to  light  conversa- 
tion with  my  interesting  host,  and  the  re- 
mainder of  my  waking  moments  to  the  gai- 
ties  of  Monte  Carlo,  to  rambles  on  the  pic- 
turesque hillsides  of  Rapallo  and  Bordi- 
ghera,  or  to  the  genial  companionship  of  my 
fellow-secretaries  under  the  snowy  awnings 
of  the  yacht. 

We  argued  the  matter  out  to  our  entire 
satisfaction.  Mr.  Pulitzer,  in  addition  to 
being  blind,  was  a  chronic  invalid,  requiring 
a  great  deal  of  sleep  and  repose.  He  could 
hardly  he  expected  to  occupy  more  than 
twelve  hours  a  day  with  his  secretaries.  That 
worked  out  at  two  hours  apiece,  or,  if  the 
division  was  made  by  days,  about  one  day 
a  week  to  each  secretary. 

The  yacht,  I  had  been  given  to  under- 


24  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

stand,  cruised  for  about  eight  months  in  the 
year  over  a  course  bounded  by  Algiers  and 
the  Piraeus,  by  IVIentone  and  Alexandria, 
with  visits  to  the  ports  of  Italy,  Sicily,  Cor- 
sica, and  Crete.  The  least  imaginative  of 
mortals  could  make  a  veiy  fair  and  alluring 
picture  of  what  life  would  be  like  under 
such  circumstances.  As  the  event  turned 
out  it  was  certainly  not  our  imaginations 
that  were  at  fault. 

As  time  passed  without  bringing  any 
further  sign  from  Mr.  Tuohy  my  hopes 
gradually  died  out,  and  I  fixed  in  my  mind 
a  date  upon  which  I  would  abandon  all  ex- 
pectations of  securing  the  appointment. 
Scarcely  had  I  reached  this  determination 
when  I  received  a  telegram  from  Mr.  Tuohy 
asking  me  to  lunch  with  him  the  next  day 
at  the  Cafe  Royal  in  order  to  meet  Mr. 
Ralph  Pulitzer,  who  was  passing  through 
London  on  his  way  back  to  America  after 
a  visit  to  his  father. 

I  leave  my  readers  to  imagine  what  sort 
of  a  lunch  I  had  in  the  company  of  two 
gentlemen  whose  duty  it  was  to  struggle 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  25 

with  the  problem  of  discovering  the  real 
character  and  attainments  of  a  guest  who 
knew  he  was  under  inspection. 

I  found  Mr.  Ralph  Pulitzer  to  be  a  slen- 
der, clean-cut,  pale  gentleman  of  an  ex- 
tremely quiet  and  self-possessed  manner. 
He  was  very  agreeable,  and  he  listened  to 
my  torrent  of  words  with  an  interest  which, 
if  it  were  real,  reflected  great  credit  on  me, 
and  which,  if  it  were  feigned,  reflected  not 
less  credit  on  him. 

As  we  parted  he  said,  "I  shall  write  to 
my  father  to-day  and  tell  him  of  our  meet- 
ing. Of  course,  as  you  know,  the  decision 
in  this  matter  rests  entirely  with  him." 

After  this  incident  there  was  another  long 
silence,  and  I  again  fixed  upon  a  day  be- 
yond which  I  would  not  allow  my  hopes  to 
flourish.  The  day  arrived,  nothing  hap- 
pened, and  the  next  morning  I  went  down 
to  the  offices  of  the  West  India  Royal  Mail 
Steam  Packet  Company  and  made  inquiries 
about  the  boats  for  Barbados.  I  spent  the 
afternoon  at  my  club  making  out  a  list  of 
things  to  be  taken  out  as  aids  to  comfort- 


r 


26  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

able  housekeeping  in  a  semi-tropical  coun- 
try— a  list  which  swelled  amazingly  as  I 
turned  over  the  fascinating  pages  of  the 
Army  and  Navy  Stores  Catalogue. 

By  dinner  time  I  had  become  more  than 
reconciled  to  the  new  turn  of  affairs,  and 
when  I  reached  my  flat  at  midnight  I  found 
myself  impatient  of  the  necessary  delay  be- 
fore I  could  settle  down  to  a  life  of  easy 
literary  activity  in  one  of  the  most  delight- 
ful climates  in  the  world  and  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  a  large  circle  of  charming 
friends  and  acquaintances. 

On  the  table  in  the  hall  I  found  a  tele- 
gram from  Mr.  Tuohy  instructing  me  to 
start  next  morning  for  Men  tone,  where  Mr. 
Pulitzer  would  entertain  me  as  his  guest  for 
a  fortnight,  either  at  his  villa  or  aboard  his 
yacht  Liberty,  and  informing  me  that  I 
would  find  at  my  club  early  in  the  morning 
an  envelope  containing  a  ticket  to  Mentone, 
with  sleeper  and  parlor-car  accommodation, 
and  a  check  to  cover  incidental  expenses. 

The  tickets  and  the  check  were  accom- 
panied by  a  letter  in  which  I  was  told  that 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  27 

I  was  to  consider  this  two  weeks'  visit  as  a 
trial,  that  during  that  time  all  my  expenses 
would  be  paid,  that  I  would  receive  an 
honorarium  of  so  much  a  day  from  the  time 
I  left  London  until  I  was  engaged  by  Mr. 
Pulitzer  or  had  arrived  back  in  London  after 
rejection  by  him,  and  that  everything  de- 
pended upon  the  impression  I  made  on  my 
host. 

I  left  London  cold,  damp,  and  foggy; 
and  in  less  than  twenty- four  hours  I  was  in 
the  train  between  Marseilles  and  Mentone, 
watching  the  surf  playing  among  the  rocks 
in  the  brilliant  sunshine  of  the  Cote  d'Azur. 
In  the  tiny  harbor  of  Mentone  I  found, 
anchored  stern-on  to  the  quay,  the  steam 
yacht  Liberty — a  miracle  of  snowy  decks 
and  gleaming  brass-work — ^tonnage  1,607, 
length  over  all  316  feet,  beam  35.6  feet,  crew 
60,  all  told. 

A  message  from  Mr.  Pulitzer  awaited 
me.  Would  I  dine  at  his  villa  at  Cap  Mar- 
tin? An  automobile  would  call  for  me  at 
seven  o'clock. 

I  spent  the  day  in  looking  over  the  yacht 


28  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

and  in  trying  to  pick  up  some  information 
as  to  the  general  lay  of  the  land,  by  observ- 
ing every  detail  of  my  new  surroundings. 

The  yacht  itself  claimed  my  first  atten- 
tion. Everything  was  new  and  fascinating 
to  me,  for  although  I  had  had  my  share  of 
experiences  in  barques,  and  brigs,  and  full- 
rigged  ships,  in  mail  boats  and  tramp  steam- 
ers, only  once  before  had  I  had  an  opportu- 
nity to  examine  closely  a  large  private  yacht. 
Ten  years  before,  I  had  spent  some  time 
cruising  along  the  northern  coast  of  Bor- 
neo in  the  yacht  of  His  Highness  Sir 
Charles  Brooke,  Raja  of  Sarawak;  but  with 
that  single  exception  yachting  was  for  me 
an  unknown  phase  of  sea  life. 

The  Liberty — or,  as  the  secretarial  staff, 
for  reasons  which  will  become  apparent 
later,  called  her,  the  Liberty,  Ha!  Ha! — 
was  designed  and  built  on  the  Clyde.  I 
have  never  seen  a  vessel  of  more  beautiful 
lines.  Sailors  would  find,  I  think,  but  one 
fault  in  her  appearance  and  one  peculiarity. 
With  a  white-painted  hull,  her  bridge  and 
the  whole  of  her  upper  structure,  except  the 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  29! 

masts  and  funnel,  were  also  white,  giving  to 
her  general  features  a  certain  flatness  which 
masked  her  fine  proportions.  Her  bridge, 
instead  of  being  well  forward,  was  placed  so 
far  aft  that  it  was  only  a  few  feet  from  the 
funnel.  The  object  of  this  departure  from 
custom  was  to  prevent  any  walking  over  Mr. 
Pulitzer's  head  when  he  sat  in  his  library, 
which  was  situated  under  the  spot,  where 
the  bridge  would  have  been  in  most  vessels. 

The  boat  was  specially  designed  to  meet 
Mr.  Pulitzer's  peculiar  requirements.  She 
had  a  flush  deck  from  the  bows  to  the  stern, 
broken  only,  for  perhaps  twenty  feet,  by  a 
well  between  the  forecastle  head  and  the 
fore  part  of  the  bridge. 

Running  aft  from  the  bridge  to  within 
forty  feet  of  the  stern  was  an  unbroken 
line  of  deck  houses.  Immediately  under  the 
bridge  was  Mr.  Pulitzer's  library,  a  hand- 
some room  lined  from  floor  to  ceiling  with 
books;  abaft  of  that  was  the  dining  saloon, 
which  could  accommodate  in  comfort  a 
dozen  people;  continuing  aft  there  were,  on 
the  port  side,  the  pantry,  amidships  the  en- 


30  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

closed  space  over  the  engine  room,  and  on 
the  starboard  side  a  long  passage  leading  to 
the  drawing-room  and  writing-room  used  by 
the  secretaries  and  by  members  of  Mr.  Pulit- 
zer's family  when  they  were  on  the  yacht. 

The  roof  and  sides  of  this  line  of  deck 
houses  were  extended  a  few  feet  beyond  the 
aftermost  room,  so  as  to  provide  a  sheltered 
nook  where  ]Mr.  Pulitzer  could  sit  when  the 
wind  was  too  strong  for  his  comfort  on  the 
open  deck. 

Between  the  sides  of  the  deck  houses  and 
the  sides  of  the  ship  there  ran  on  each  side 
a  promenade  about  nine  feet  broad,  un- 
broken by  bolt  or  nut,  stanchion  or  venti- 
lator, smooth  as  a  billiard  table  and  made 
of  the  finest  quality  of  seasoned  teak.  The 
promenade  continued  across  the  fore  part  of 
Mr.  Pulitzer's  library  and  across  the  after 
part  of  the  line  of  deck  houses,  so  that  there 
was  an  oblong  track  round  the  greater  part 
of  the  boat,  a  track  covered  overhead  with 
double  awnings  and  protected  inboard  by 
the  sides  of  the  deck  houses,  and  outboard 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  31 

by  adjustable  canvas  screens,  which  could 
be  let  do\\Ti  or  rolled  up  in  a  few  minutes. 

About  thirty  feet  from  the  stern  a  heavy 
double  canvas  screen  ran  'thwartships  from 
one  side  of  the  boat  to  the  other,  shutting 
off  a  small  space  of  deck  for  the  use  of  the 
crew.  The  main  deck  space  was  allotted  as 
follows:  under  the  forecastle  head  accom- 
modation for  two  officers  and  two  petty  offi- 
cers, abaft  of  that  the  well  space,  of  which 
I  have  spoken;  under  the  library  was  Mr. 
Pulitzer's  bedroom,  occupying  the  whole 
breadth  of  the  ship  and  extending  from  the 
bulkhead  at  the  after  part  of  the  well  space 
as  far  aft  as  the  companion  way  leading 
down  between  the  library  and  the  saloon, 
say  twenty-five  feet. 

A  considerable  proportion  of  the  sides  of 
this  bedroom  was  given  up  to  books ;  in  one 
corner  was  a  very  high  wash-hand-stand, 
so  high  that  Mr.  Pulitzer,  who  was  well  over 
six  feet  tall,  could  wash  his  hands  without 
stooping.  The  provision  of  this  very  high 
wash-hand-stand  illustrates  the  minute  care 
with  which  everything  had  been  foreseen  in 


32  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

the  construction  and  fitting-up  of  the  yacht. 
When  a  person  stoops  there  is  a  shght  im- 
pediment to  the  free  flow  of  blood  to  the 
head,  such  an  impediment  might  react  un- 
favorably on  the  condition  of  Mr.  Pulitzer's 
eyes,  therefore  the  wash-hand-stand  was  high 
enough  to  be  used  without  stooping. 

In  the  forward  bulldiead  of  the  cabin  were 
two  silent  fans,  one  di-awing  air  into  the 
room,  the  other  di'awing  it  out.  The  most 
striking  feature  of  the  room  was  an  im- 
mense four-poster  bed  wliich  stood  in  the 
center  of  the  cabin,  with  a  couch  at  the  foot 
and  one  or  two  chairs  at  one  side.  Hang- 
ing at  the  head  of  the  bed  was  a  set  of  elec- 
tric push-bells,  the  cords  being  of  different 
lengths  so  that  Mr.  Pulitzer  could  call  at 
will  for  the  major-domo,  the  chief  steward, 
the  captain,  the  officer  on  watch,  and  so  on. 

The  bedroom  was  heavily  carpeted  and 
was  cut  off  from  the  rest  of  the  ship  by 
double  bulkheads,  double  doors,  and  double 
portholes,  with  the  object  of  protecting  Mr. 
Pulitzer  as  much  as  possible  from  all  noise, 
to  which  he  was  excessively  sensitive.     A 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  33 

large  bathroom  opened  immediately  ojff  the 
bedroom,  and  a  flight  of  steps  led  down  to 
a  gymnasium  on  the  lower  deck. 

Abaft  of  ]Mr.  Pulitzer's  bedroom  there 
were,  on  the  port  side,  the  cabins  of  the 
major-domo,  the  captain,  the  head  butler, 
the  chief  engineer,  an  officers'  mess  room, 
the  ship's  galley,  a  steward's  mess  room,  and 
the  cabins  of  the  chief  steward  and  one  or 
two  officers. 

Corresponding  with  these  there  were,  on 
the  starboard  side,  the  cabins  of  the  secretar- 
ies and  the  doctor,  "The  Cells,"  as  we  called 
them.  They  were  comfortable  rooms,  all 
very  much  on  one  pattern,  except  that  of  the 
business  secretary,  which  was  a  good  deal 
larger  than  the  others.  He  needed  the  ad- 
ditional space  for  newspaper  files,  docu- 
ments, correspondence,  and  so  on.  Each 
cabin  contained  a  bed,  a  wash-hand-stand, 
a  chest  of  draw^ers,  a  cupboard  for  clothes, 
a  small  folding  table,  some  book  shelves,  an 
arm  chair,  an  ordinary  chair,  an  electric  fan, 
and  a  radiator.    Each  cabin  had  two  port- 


34  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

holes,  and  there  were  two  bathrooms  to  the 
six  cabins. 

The  center  of  the  ship,  between  these 
cabins  and  the  corresponding  space  on  the 
port  side,  was  occupied  by  the  engine  room; 
and  the  entrance  to  the  secretaries'  quarters 
was  through  a  companionway  opening  on  to 
the  promenade  deck,  with  a  door  on  each 
side  of  the  yacht,  and  leading  down  a  flight 
of  stairs  to  a  long  fore-and-aft  passage, 
out  of  which  all  the  secretaries'  cabins 
opened. 

Abaft  the  secretaries'  cabins,  and  occupy- 
ing the  whole  breadth  of  the  boat,  were  a 
number  of  cabins  and  suites  for  the  accom- 
modation of  Mrs.  Pulitzer,  other  members 
of  the  family,  and  guests;  and  abaft  of 
these,  cut  off  by  a  'thwartships  bulkhead, 
were  the  quarters  of  the  crew. 

The  lower  deck  was  given  over  chiefly  to 
stores,  coal  bunkers,  the  engine  room,  the 
stoke-hold,  and  to  a  large  number  of  elec- 
tric accumulators,  which  kept  the  electric 
lights  going  when  the  engines  were  not 
working.    There  were,  however,  on  this  deck 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  85 

the  gymnasium,  and  a  large  room,  directly 
under  Mr.  Pulitzer's  bedroom,  used  to  take 
the  overflow  from  the  Hbrary. 

The  engines  were  designed  rather  for 
smooth  running  than  for  speed,  and  twelve 
knots  an  hour  was  the  utmost  that  could 
be  got  out  of  them,  the  average  running 
speed  being  about  eight  knots.  The  yacht 
had  an  ample  supply  of  boats,  including 
two  steam  launches,  one  burning  coal,  the 
other  oil. 

During  my  inspection  of  the  yacht  I  was 
accompanied  by  my  cabin-steward,  a  young 
Englishman  who  had  at  one  time  served 
aboard  the  German  Emperor's  yacht, 
Meteor.  Nothing  could  have  been  more 
courteous  than  his  manner  or  more  intelli- 
gent than  his  explanations ;  but  the  moment 
I  tried  to  draw  him  out  on  the  subject  of 
life  on  the  yacht  he  relapsed  into  a  vague- 
ness from  which  I  could  extract  no  gleam  of 
enlightenment.  After  fencing  for  some  time 
with  my  queries  he  suggested  that  I  might 
like  to  have  a  glass  of  sherry  and  a  biscuit  in 


36  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

the   secretaries'   library,    and,  piloting  me 
thither,  he  left  me. 

The  smoking-room  was  furnished  with 
writing  tables,  some  luxurious  arm  chairs, 
and  a  comfortable  lounge,  and  every  spare 
nook  was  filled  with  book  shelves.  The  con- 
tents of  these  shelves  were  extremely  varied. 
A  cursoiy  glance  showed  me  Meyer's  Neues 
Konversations-Leocicon,  The  Yacht  Regis- 
ter, Whitakej^'s  Almanack,  Who's  Who, 
Burke's  Peerage,  The  Ahnanach  de  Gotha, 
the  British  and  the  Continental  Bradshaw, 
a  number  of  Baedeker's  "Guides,"  fifty  or 
sixty  volumes  of  the  Tauchnitz  edition,  a 
large  collection  of  files  of  reviews  and  maga- 
zines— The  Nineteenth  Century,  Quarterly, 
Edinburgh,  Fortnightly,  Contemporary, 
National,  Atlantic,  North  American,  Revue 
de  Deux  Mondes — and  a  scattering  of  vol- 
umes by  Kipling,  Shaw,  Rosebery,  Pater, 
Ida  Tarbell,  Bryce,  Fen'ero,  Macaulay,  An- 
atole  France,  Maupassant,  "Dooley,"  and  a 
large  number  of  French  and  German  plays. 
I  was  struck  by  the  entire  absence  of  books 
of  travel  and  scientific  works. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  37 

I  spent  part  of  the  afternoon  in  the  draw- 
ing-room playing  a  large  instrument  of  the 
gramophone  type.  There  were  several  hmi- 
dred  records — from  grand  opera,  violin 
solos  by  Kreisler,  and  the  Gilbert  and  Sulli- 
van operas,  to  rag-time  and  the  latest  comic 
songs. 

Before  the  time  came  to  dress  for  dinner 
I  had  met  the  captain  and  some  of  the  offi- 
cers of  the  yacht.  They  were  all  very  civil; 
and  my  own  experience  as  a  sailor  enabled 
me  to  see  that  they  were  highly  efficient  men. 
I  was  a  good  deal  puzzled,  however,  by 
something  peculiar  but  very  elusive  in  their 
attitude  toward  me,  something  which  I  had 
at  once  detected  in  the  manner  of  my  cabin- 
steward. 

With  their  courtesy  was  mingled  a  cer- 
tain flavor  of  curiosity  tinged  with  amuse- 
ment, which,  so  far  from  being  offensive, 
was  distinctly  friendly,  but  which,  neverthe- 
less, gave  me  a  vague  sense  of  uneasiness. 
In  fact  the  whole  atmosphere  of  the  yacht 
was  one  of  restlessness  and  suspense;  and 
the  effect  was  heightened  because  each  per- 


38  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

son  who  spoke  to  me  appeared  to  be  on  the 
point  of  divulging  some  secret  or  deliver- 
ing some  advice,  which  discretion  checked  at 
his  Hps. 

I  felt  myself  very  much  under  observa- 
tion, a  feeling  as  though  I  was  a  new  boy 
in  a  boarding  school  or  a  new  animal  at  the 
zoo — interesting  to  my  companions  not  only 
on  account  of  my  novelty,  but  because  my 
personal  peculiarities  would  affect  the  com- 
fort of  the  community  of  which  I  was  to 
become  a  member. 

At  seven  o'clock  my  cabin-steward  an- 
nounced the  arrival  of  the  automobile,  and 
after  a  swift  run  along  the  plage  and  up 
the  winding  roads  on  the  hillsides  of  Cap 
Martin  I  found  myself  at  the  door  of  Mr. 
Pulitzer's  villa.  I  was  received  by  the 
major-domo,  ushered  into  the  drawing- 
room,  and  informed  that  Mr.  Pulitzer  would 
be  down  in  a  few  minutes. 


CHAPTER   II 

Meeting  Joseph  Pulitzer 

BEFORE  I  had  time  to  examine  my  sur- 
roundings Mr.  Pulitzer  entered  the 
room  on  the  arm  of  the  major-domo.  My 
first  swift  impression  was  of  a  very  tall 
man  with  broad  shoulders,  the  rest  of  the 
body  tapering  away  to  thinness,  with  a  noble 
head,  bushy  reddish  beard  streaked  with 
gray,  black  hair,  swept  back  from  the  fore- 
head and  lightly  touched  here  and  there  with 
silvery  white.  One  eye  was  dull  and  half 
closed,  the  other  was  of  a  deep,  brilliant 
blue  which,  so  far  from  suggesting  bhnd- 
ness,  created  the  instant  effect  of  a  search- 
ing, eagle-like  glance.  The  outstretched 
hand  was  large,  strong,  nervous,  full  of 
character,  ending  in  well-shaped  and  im- 
maculately kept  nails. 

39 


40  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

A  high-pitched  voice,  clear,  penetrating, 
and  vibrant,  gave  ovit  the  strange  challenge: 
"Well,  here  you  see  before  you  the  miser- 
able wreck  who  is  to  be  your  host ;  you  must 
make  the  best  you  can  of  him.  Give  me 
your  arm  into  dinner." 

I  may  complete  here  a  description  of  Mr. 
Pulitzer's  appearance,  founded  upon  months 
of  close  personal  association  with  him.  The 
head  was  splendidly  modeled,  the  forehead 
high,  the  brows  prominent  and  arched;  the 
ears  were  large,  the  nose  was  long  and 
hooked;  the  mouth,  almost  concealed  by  the 
mustache,  w^as  firm  and  thin-lipped;  the 
jaws  showed  square  and  powerful  under  the 
beard ;  the  length  of  the  face  was  much  em- 
phasized by  the  flowing  beard  and  by  the 
way  in  which  the  hair  was  brushed  back 
from  the  forehead.  The  skin  was  of  a  clear, 
healthy  pink,  like  a  young  girl's ;  but  in  mo- 
ments of  intense  excitement  the  color  would 
deepen  to  a  dark,  ruddy  flush,  and  after  a 
succession  of  sleepless  nights,  or  under  the 
strain  of  continued  worry,  it  would  turn  a 
dull,  Hfeless  gray. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  41 

I  have  never  seen  a  face  which  varied  so 
much  in  expression.  Not  only  was  there  a 
marked  difference  at  all  times  between  one 
side  and  the  other,  due  partly  to  the  con- 
trast between  the  two  eyes  and  partly  to  a 
loss  of  flexibility  in  the  muscles  of  the  right 
side,  but  almost  from  moment  to  moment 
the  general  appearance  of  the  face  moved 
between  a  lively,  genial  animation,  a  ciniel 
and  wolf -like  scowl,  and  a  heavy  and  hope- 
less dejection.  No  face  was  capable  of 
shoeing  greater  tenderness;  none  could  as- 
sume a  more  forbidding  expression  of  anger 
and  contempt. 

The  Sargent  portrait,  which  forms  the 
frontispiece  of  this  volume,  is  a  remarkable 
revelation  of  the  complex  nature  of  its  sub- 
ject. It  discloses  the  deep  affection,  the 
keen  intelligence,  the  wide  sympathy,  the 
tireless  energy,  the  delicate  sensitiveness,  the 
tearing  impatience,  the  cold  tyranny,  and 
the  flaming  scorn  by  which  his  character  was 
so  erratically  dominated.  It  is  a  noble  and 
pathetic  monument  to  the  suffering  which 
had  been  imposed  for  a  quarter  of  a  century 


42  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

upon  the  intense  and  arbitrary  spirit  of  this 
extraordinary  man. 

The  account  which  I  am  to  give  of  Mr. 
Pulitzer's  daily  life  during  the  months  im- 
mediately preceding  his  death  would  be  un- 
intelligible to  all  but  the  very  few  who  knew 
him  in  recent  years  if  it  were  not  prefaced 
by  a  brief  biographical  note. 

Joseph  PuUtzer  was  born  in  the  village 
of  Mako,  near  Buda  Pesth  in  Hungary,  on 
April  10,  1847.  His  father  was  a  Jew,  his 
mother  a  Christian.  At  the  age  of  sixteen 
he  emigrated  to  the  United  States.  He 
landed  without  friends,  without  money,  un- 
able to  speak  a  word  of  English.  He  en- 
listed immediately  in  the  First  New  York 
(Lincoln)  Cavalry  Regiment,  a  regiment 
chiefly  composed  of  Germans  and  in  which 
German  was  the  prevailing  tongue. 

Within  a  year  the  Civil  War  ended,  and 
Pulitzer  found  himself,  in  common  with  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  others,  out  of  employ- 
ment at  a  time  when  employment  was  most 
difficult  to  secure.  At  this  time  he  was  so 
poor  that  he  was  turned  away  from  French's 


JOSEPH    PULITZER 
AT   THE    AGE    OF   THIRTY'FOUR 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  43 

Hotel  for  lack  of  fifty  cents  with  which  to 
pay  for  his  bed.  In  less  than  twenty  years 
he  bought  French's  Hotel,  pulled  it  down, 
and  erected  in  its  place  the  Pulitzer  Build- 
ing, at  that  time  one  of  the  largest  business 
buildings  in  New  York,  where  he  housed 
The  World. 

What  lay  between  these  two  events  may 
be  summed  up  in  a  few  words.  At  the  close 
of  the  Civil  War  Mr.  Pulitzer  went  to  St. 
Louis,  and  in  1868,  after  being  engaged  in 
various  occupations,  he  became  a  reporter 
on  the  Westliche  Post,  In  less  than  ten 
years  he  was  editor  and  part  proprietor. 
His  amazing  energy,  his  passionate  interest 
in  politics,  his  rare  gift  of  terse  and  forcible 
expression,  and  his  striking  personality  car- 
ried him  over  or  through  all  obstacles. 

After  he  had  purchased  the  St.  Louis 
Dispatch,  amalgamated  it  with  the  Post,  and 
made  the  Post-Dispatch  sl  profitable  busi- 
ness enterprise  and  a  power  to  be  reckoned 
with  in  politics,  he  felt  the  need  of  a  wider 
field  in  which  to  maneuver  the  forces  of  his 
character  and  his  intellect. 


U  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

He  came  to  New  York  in  1883  and  pur- 
chased The  World  from  Jay  Gould.  At 
that  time  The  World  had  a  circulation  of 
less  than  twelve  thousand  copies  a  day,  and 
was  practically  bankrupt.  From  this  time 
forward  Mr.  Pulitzer  concentrated  his  every 
faculty  on  building  up  The  World.  He 
was  scoffed  at,  ridiculed,  and  abused  by  the 
most  powerful  editors  of  the  old  school. 
They  were  to  learn,  not  without  bitterness 
and  wounds,  that  opposition  was  the  one 
fuel  of  all  others  which  best  fed  the  triple 
flame  of  his  courage,  his  tenacity,  and  his 
resourcefulness. 

Four  years  of  unremitting  toil  produced 
two  results.  The  World  reached  a  circula- 
tion of  two  hundred  thousand  copies  a  day 
and  took  its  place  in  the  front  rank  of  the 
American  press  as  a  journal  of  force  and 
ability,  and  Joseph  Pulitzer  left  New  York, 
a  complete  nervous  wreck,  to  face  in  soli- 
tude the  knowledge  that  he  would  never  read 
print  again  and  that  within  a  few  years  he 
would  be  totally  blind. 

Joseph  Pulitzer,  as  I  knew  him  twenty- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  45 

four  years  after  he  had  been  driven  from 
active  life  by  the  sudden  and  final  collapse 
of  his  health,  was  a  man  who  could  be  judged 
by  no  common  standards,  for  his  feelings, 
his  temper,  and  his  point  of  view  had  been 
warped  by  years  of  suffering. 

Had  his  spirit  been  broken  by  his  trials, 
had  his  intellectual  power  weakened  under 
the  load  of  his  affliction,  had  his  burning  in- 
terest in  affairs  cooled  to  a  point  where  he 
could  have  been  content  to  turn  his  back 
upon  life's  conflict,  he  might  have  found 
some  happiness,  or  at  least  some  measure  of 
repose  akin  to  that  with  which  age  consoles 
us  for  the  loss  of  youth.  But  his  greatest 
misfortune  was  that  all  the  active  forces  of 
his  personahty  survived  to  the  last  in  their 
full  vigor,  inflicting  upon  him  the  curse  of 
an  impatience  which  nothing  could  appease, 
of  a  discontent  which  knew  no  amelioration. 

JMy  first  meeting  with  Mr.  Pulitzer  is  in- 
delibly fixed  in  my  memory.  As  we  entered 
the  dining-room  the  butler  motioned  to  me 
to  take  a  seat  on  ]Mr.  Pulitzer's  right  hand, 
and  as  I  did  so  I  glanced  up  and  down  the 


46  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

table  to  find  myself  in  the  presence  of  half- 
a-dozen  gentlemen  in  evening  dress,  who 
bowed  in  a  very  friendly  manner  as  Mr. 
Pulitzer  said,  with  a  broad  sweep  of  his 
hand,  "Gentlemen,  this  is  Mr.  AUeyne  Ire- 
land; you  will  be  able  to  inform  him  later 
of  my  fads  and  crotchets;  well,  don't  be  un- 
generous with  me,  don't  paint  the  devil  as 
black  as  he  is." 

This  was  spoken  in  a  tone  of  banter,  and 
was  cut  short  by  a  curious,  prolonged 
chuckle,  which  differed  from  laughter  in  the 
feeling  it  produced  in  the  hearer  that  the 
mirth  did  not  spring  from  the  open,  obvious 
humor  of  the  situation,  but  from  some 
whimsical  thought  which  was  the  more  rel- 
ished because  its  nature  was  concealed  from 
us.  I  felt  that,  instead  of  my  host's  amuse- 
ment having  been  produced  by  his  peculiar 
introduction,  he  had  made  his  eccentric  ad- 
dress merely  as  an  excuse  to  chuclde  over 
some  notion  which  had  formed  itself  in  his 
mind  from  material  entirely  foreign  to  his 
immediate  surroundings. 

I  mention  this  because  I  found  later  that 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  47 

one  of  Mr.  Pulitzer's  most  embarrassing 
peculiarities  was  the  sudden  revelation  from 
time  to  time  of  a  mental  state  entirely  at 
odds  with  the  occupation  of  the  moment. 
In  the  middle  of  an  account  of  a  play,  when 
I  was  doing  my  best  to  reproduce  some 
scene  from  memory,  with  appropriate 
changes  of  voice  to  represent  the  different 
characters,  Mr.  Pulitzer  would  suddenly 
break  in,  "Did  we  ever  get  a  reply  to  that 
letter  about  Laurier's  speech  on  reciprocity? 
No?    Well,  all  right,  go  on,  go  on." 

Or  it  might  be  when  I  was  reading  from 
the  daily  papers  an  account  of  a  murder  or 
a  railroad  wreck  that  Mr.  Pulitzer  would 
break  out  into  a  peal  of  his  peculiar  chuck- 
ling laughter.  I  would  imjnediately  stop 
reading,  when  he  would  pat  me  on  the  arm, 
and  say,  "Go  on,  boy,  go  on,  don't  mind 
me.  I  wasn't  laughing  at  you.  I  was  think- 
ing of  something  else.  What  was  it?  Oh, 
a  railroad  wreck,  well,  don't  stop,  go  on 
reading." 

As  soon  as  we  were  seated  Mr.  Puhtzer 
turned  to  me  and  began  to  question  me  about 


48  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

my  reading.  Had  I  read  any  recent  fiction? 
No?  Well,  what  had  I  read  within  the  past 
month? 

I  named  several  books  which  I  had  been 
re-reading — Macaulay's  Essays,  Meredith 
Townsend's  Asia  and  Europe,  and  Lowes 
Dickinson's  Modern  Symposium. 

"Well,  tell  me  something  about  Asia  and 
Europe,"  he  said. 

I  left  my  dinner  untasted,  and  for  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  held  forth  on  the  life  of 
Mohammed,  on  the  courage  of  the  Arabians, 
on  the  charm  of  Asia  for  Asiatics,  and  on 
other  matters  taken  from  Mr.  Townsend's 
fascinating  book.  Suddenly  Mr.  Pulitzer 
interrupted  me. 

"My  God!  You  don't  mean  to  tell  me 
that  anyone  is  interested  in  that  sort  of  rub- 
bish. Everybody  knows  about  Mohammed, 
and  about  the  bravery  of  the  Arabs,  and,  for 
God's  sake,  why  shouldn't  Asia  be  attractive 
to  the  Asiatics!  Try  something  else.  Do 
you  remember  any  plays?" 

Yes,  I  remembered  several  pretty  well. 
Shaw's  Ccesar  and  Cleopatra  for  instance. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  49 

"Go  on,  then,  try  and  tell  me  about  that." 

JNIy  prospects  of  getting  any  dinner  faded 
away  as  I  began  my  new  effort.  Fortu- 
natelj^  I  knew  the  play  very  well,  and  re- 
membered a  number  of  passages  almost 
word  for  w^ord.  I  soon  saw  that  ISlr.  Pulit- 
zer was  interested  and  pleased,  not  with  the 
play  as  anything  new  to  him,  for  he  prob- 
ably knew  it  better  than  I  did,  but  with  my 
presentation  of  it,  because  it  showed  some 
ability  to  compress  narrative  without  de- 
stroying its  character  and  also  gave  some 
proof  of  a  good  memory. 

When  I  reached  the  scene  in  wliich  Caesar 
replies  to  Britannus's  protest  against  the 
recognition  of  Cleopatra's  marriage  to  her 
brother,  Ptolemy,  by  saying,  "Pardon  him, 
Theodotus;  he  is  a  barbarian,  and  thinks 
that  the  customs  of  his  tribe  are  the  laws  of 
nature,"  Mr.  Pulitzer  burst  into  an  uncon- 
trollable fit  of  laughter. 

I  was  about  to  continue,  and  try  to  make 
good  better,  when  Mr.  Pulitzer  raised  his 
hands  above  his  head  in  remonstrance. 

"Stop!    Stop!    For  God's  sake!    You're 


50  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

hurting  me,"  very  much  as  a  person  with  a 
cracked  lip  begs  for  mercy  when  you  are  in 
the  middle  of  your  most  humorous  story. 

I  found  out  later  that,  in  order  to  keep 
in  Mr.  Pulitzer's  good  graces,  it  was  as 
necessary  to  avoid  being  too  funny  as  it  was 
to  avoid  being  too  dull,  for,  while  the  latter 
fault  hurt  his  intellectual  sensitiveness,  the 
former  involved,  through  the  excessive 
laughter  it  produced,  a  degree  of  involun- 
tary exertion  which,  in  his  disordered  physi- 
cal condition,  caused  him  acute  pain. 

Mr.  Pulitzer's  constant  use  of  the  excla- 
mations "My  God!"  and  "For  God's  sake!" 
had  no  relation  whatever  to  swearing,  as 
the  term  is  usually  understood;  they  were 
employed  exactly  as  a  French  lady  employs 
the  exclamation  Mon  Dieu!  or  a  German 
the  expression  Ach^  du  liebe  Gott!  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  although  Mr.  Pulitzer  was 
a  man  of  strong  and,  at  times,  violent  emo- 
tions, and,  from  his  deplorable  nervous 
state,  excessively  irritable,  I  do  not  think 
that  in  the  eight  months  I  was  with  him, 
during  the  greater  part  of  which  time  he 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  51 

was  not  under  any  restraining  influence, 
such  as  might  be  exerted  by  the  presence  of 
ladies,  I  heard  him  use  any  oath  except  oc- 
casionally a  "damn,"  which  appealed  to  him, 
I  think,  as  a  suitable  if  not  a  necessary  quali- 
fication of  the  word  "fool."  For  JVIr.  Pulit- 
zer there  were  no  fools  except  damned  fools. 
After  the  excitement  about  Ccesar  and 
Cleopatra  had  subsided,  Mr.  Pulitzer  asked 
me  if  I  had  a  good  memory.  I  hesitated 
before  replying,  because  I  had  seen  enough 
of  Mr.  Pulitzer  in  an  hour  to  realize  that 
a  constant  exercise  of  caution  would  be 
necessary  if  I  wished  to  avoid  offending  his 
prejudices  or  wounding  his  susceptibilities; 
and  whereas  on  the  one  hand  I  did  not  wish 
to  set  a  standard  for  myself  which  I  would 
find  it  impossible  to  live  up  to,  on  the  other 
hand  I  was  anxious  to  avoid  giving  any  de- 
scription of  my  abilities  which  would  be  fol- 
lowed later  by  a  polite  intimation  from  the 
major-domo  that  Mr.  Pulitzer  had  enjoyed 
my  visit  immensely  but  that  I  was  not  just 
the  man  for  the  place. 


52  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

So  I  compromised  and  said  that  I  had  a 
fairly  good  memory. 

"Well,  everybody  thinks  he's  got  a  good 
memory,"  replied  Mr.  Pulitzer. 

"I  only  claimed  a  fairly  good  one,"  I  pro- 
tested. 

"Oh!  that's  just  an  affectation;  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact  you  think  you've  got  a  splendid 
memory,  don't  you?  Now,  be  frank  about 
it;  I  love  people  to  be  frank  with  me." 

My  valor  got  the  better  of  my  discretion, 
and  I  replied  that  if  he  really  wished  me  to 
be  frank  I  was  willing  to  admit  that  I  had 
no  particular  desire  to  lay  claim  to  a  good 
memory,  for  I  was  inclined  to  accept  the 
view  which  I  had  once  heard  expressed  by 
a  very  wise  man  of  my  acquaintance  that 
the  human  mind  was  not  intended  to  re- 
member with  but  to  think  with,  and  that 
one  of  the  greatest  benefits  which  had  been 
conferred  on  mankind  by  the  discovery  of 
printing  was  that  thousands  of  things  could 
be  recorded  for  reference  which  former  gen- 
erations had  been  compelled  to  learn  by  rote. 

"Your  wise   friend,"   he   cried,    "was   a 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  53 

damned  fool!  If  you  will  give  the  matter 
a  moment's  thought  you'll  see  that  memory 
is  the  highest  facultj^  of  the  human  mind. 
What  becomes  of  all  your  reading,  all  your 
observation,  your  experience,  study,  investi- 
gations, discussions — in  a  rushing  crescendo 
— if  you  have  no  memory?" 

"I  might  reply,"  I  said,  "by  asking  what 
use  it  is  to  lumber  up  your  mind  with  a  mass 
of  information  of  which  you  are  only  going 
to  make  an  occasional  use  when  you  can 
have  it  filed  away  in  encyclopedias  and  other 
works  of  reference,  and  in  card  indexes,  in- 
stantly available  when  you  want  it." 

I  spoke  in  a  light  and  rather  humorous 
tone  in  order  to  take  the  edge  off  my  dissent 
from  his  opinion,  reflecting  that  even  be- 
tween friends  and  equals  a  demand  for 
frankness  is  most  safely  to  be  regarded  as 
a  danger  signal  to  impulsiveness ;  but  it  was 
too  late,  I  had  evidently  overstepped  the 
mark,  for  Mr.  Pulitzer  turned  abruptly 
from  me  without  replying,  and  began  to 
talk  to  the  gentleman  on  his  left. 

This  had  the  twofold  advantage  of  giving 


54  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

me  time  to  reconsider  my  strategy,  and  to 
eat  some  dinner,  which  one  of  the  footmen, 
evidently  the  kind  with  a  memory  for  for- 
mer experiences,  had  set  on  one  side  and 
kept  warm  against  the  moment  when  I  would 
be  free  to  enjoy  it. 

As  I  ate  I  listened  to  the  conversation. 
It  made  my  heart  sink.  The  gentleman  to 
whom  ]Mr.  Pulitzer  had  transferred  his  at- 
tentions w^as  a  Scotchman,  Mr.  William  Ro- 
maine  Paterson.  I  discovered  later  that  he 
was  the  nearest  possible  approach  to  a  walk- 
ing encyclopedia.  His  range  of  informa- 
tion was — well,  I  am  tempted  to  say,  in- 
famous. He  appeared  to  have  an  exhaus- 
tive knowledge  of  French,  German,  Itahan, 
and  English  literature,  of  European  his- 
tory in  its  most  complicated  ramifications, 
and  of  general  biography  in  such  a  meas- 
ure that,  in  regard  to  people  as  well  known 
as  Goethe,  Voltaire,  Kossuth,  Napoleon, 
Garibaldi,  Bismarck,  and  a  score  of  others, 
he  could  fix  a  precise  day  on  which  any 
event  or  conversation  had  taken  place,  and 
recall  it  in  its  minutest  details. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  55 

It  was  not  simply  from  the  standpoint  of 
my  own  ignorance  that  Paterson's  store  of 
knowledge  assmned  such  vast  proportions, 
for  it  was  seldom  opened  except  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Mr.  Pulitzer,  in  whom  were  com- 
bined a  tenacious  memory,  a  profound  ac- 
quaintance with  the  subjects  which  Pater- 
son  had  taken  for  his  province,  an  analytic 
mind,  and  a  zest  for  contradiction.  Every- 
thing Paterson  said  was  immediately 
pounced  upon  by  a  vigorous,  astute,  and 
well-informed  critic  who  derived  peculiar 
satisfaction  from  the  rare  instances  in  which 
he  could  detect  him  in  an  inaccuracy. 

The  conversation  between  Mr.  Pulitzer 
and  Paterson,  or,  rather,  Paterson's  fre- 
quently interrupted  monologue,  lasted  until 
we  had  all  finished  dinner,  and  the  butler 
had  lighted  Mr.  Pulitzer's  cigar.  In  the 
middle  of  an  eloquent  passage  from  Pater- 
son, Mr.  Pulitzer  rose,  turned  abruptly  to- 
ward me,  held  out  liis  hand,  and  said,  "I'm 
very  glad  to  have  met  you,  Mr.  Ireland ;  you 
have  entertained  me  very  much.  Please 
come  here  to-morrow  at  eleven  o'clock,  and 


56  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

I'll  take  you  out  for  a  drive.  Good-night.'* 
He  took  Paterson's  arm  and  left  the  room. 

The  door,  like  all  the  doors  in  Mr.  Pulit- 
zer's various  residences,  shut  automatically 
and  silently ;  and  after  one  of  the  secretaries 
had  drawn  a  heavy  velvet  curtain  across  the 
doorway,  so  that  not  the  faintest  sound  could 
escape  from  the  room,  I  was  chaffed  good- 
naturedly  about  my  debut  as  a  candidate. 
To  my  great  surprise  I  was  congratulated 
on  having  done  very  well. 

"You  made  a  great  hit,"  said  one,  "with 
your  account  of  Shaw's  play." 

"I  nearly  burst  out  laughing,"  said  an- 
other, "when  you  gave  your  views  about 
memory.  I  think  you're  dead  right  about 
it;  but  J.  P. — Mr.  Pulitzer  was  always  re- 
ferred to  as  J.  P. — is  crazy  about  people 
having  good  memories,  so  if  you've  really 
got  a  good  memory  you'd  better  let  him  find 
it  out." 

I  was  told  that,  so  far  as  we  were  con- 
cerned, the  day's  work,  or  at  least  that  por- 
tion of  it  which  involved  being  with  J.  P., 
was  to  be  considered  over  as  soon  as  he  re- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  57 

tired  to  the  library  after  dinner.  His  object 
then  was  to  be  left  alone  with  one  secretary, 
who  read  to  him  until  about  ten  o'clock,  when 
the  major-domo  came  and  took  him  to  liis 
rooms  for  the  night.  As  a  i-ule,  J.  P.  made 
no  further  demand  on  the  bodily  presence 
of  his  secretaries  after  he  had  gone  to  bed, 
but  occasionally,  when  he  could  not  sleep, 
one  of  them  would  be  called,  perhaps  at  three 
in  the  morning,  to  read  to  him. 

This  meant  in  practice  that,  when  we  were 
ashore,  one,  or  more  usually  two  of  us,  would 
remain  in  the  house  in  case  of  emergency. 
This  did  not  by  any  means  imply  that  we 
were  always  free  from  work  after  ten 
o'clock  at  night,  in  fact  the  very  opposite 
was  true,  for  it  was  J.  P.'s  custom  to 
say,  during  dinner,  that  on  the  following 
day  he  would  ride,  drive,  or  walk  with  such 
a  one  or  such  a  one,  naming  him;  and  the 
victim — a  term  frequently  used  with  a  good 
deal  of  surprisingly  frank  enjoyment  by 
J.  P.  himself — had  often  to  work  well  into 
the  night  preparing  material  for  conversa- 
tion. 


58  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

I  saw  something  of  what  this  preparation 
meant  before  I  left  the  villa  after  my  first 
meeting  with  J,  P.  Two  of  the  secretaries 
said  they  would  go  over  to  Monte  Carlo, 
and  they  asked  me  to  go  with  them;  but  I 
declined,  preferring  to  remain  behind  for 
a  chat  with  one  of  the  secretaries,  Mr.  Nor- 
man G.  Thwaites,  an  Englishman,  who  was 
secretary  in  a  more  technical  sense  than  any 
of  the  rest  of  us,  for  he  was  a  shorthand 
wi-iter  and  did  most  of  J.  P.'s  correspond- 
ence. 

After  the  others  had  gone  he  showed  me 
a  table  in  the  entrance  hall  of  the  villa,  on 
which  was  a  big  pile  of  mail  just  arrived 
from  London.  It  included  a  great  num- 
ber of  newspapers  and  weeklies,  several  cop- 
ies of  each.  There  were  The  Times,  The 
Daily  Telegraph,  The  Baihj  Mail,  The 
Morning  Post,  The  Daily  News,  The  West- 
minster Gazette,  Truths  The  Spectator,  The 
Saturday  Review,  The  Nation,  The  Out- 
look, and  some  other  London  publications, 
as  well  as  the  Paris  editions  of  the  New 
York  Herald  and  The  Daily  Mail, 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  59 

Thwaites  selected  a  copy  of  each  and  then 
led  the  way  to  his  bedroom,  a  large  room  on 
the  top  floor,  from  which  we  could  see  across 
the  bay  the  brilliant  lights  of  Monte  Carlo. 

He  then  explained  to  me  that  he  had  been 
selected  to  read  to  J.  P.  whilst  the  latter 
had  his  breakfast  and  his  after-breakfast 
cigar  the  next  morning.  In  order  to  do  this 
satisfactorily  he  had  to  go  over  the  papers 
and  read  carefully  whatever  he  could  find 
that  was  suited  to  J.  P.'s  taste  at  that  par- 
ticular time  of  the  day.  During  the  break- 
fast hour  J.  P.  would  not  have  anything 
read  to  him  which  was  of  an  exciting  nature. 
This  preference  excluded  political  news, 
crime,  disaster,  and  war  correspondence,  and 
left  practically  nothing  but  book  reviews, 
criticisms  of  plays,  operas,  and  art  exhibi- 
tions, and  publishers'  announcements. 

The  principal  sources  of  information  on 
these  topics  were  the  literary  supplement  of 
the  London  Times,  the  Literary  Digest,  and 
the  literary,  dramatic,  and  musical  columns 
of  the  Athenceum,  The  Spectator,  and  the 
Saturday  Review, 


60  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

These  had  to  be  "prepared,"  to  use  J.  P.'s 
phrase,  which  meant  that  they  were  read 
over  rapidly  once  and  then  gone  over  again 
with  some  concentration  so  that  the  more 
important  articles  could  be  marked  for  ac- 
tual reading,  the  other  portions  being  dealt 
with  conversationally,  everything  being 
boiled  down  to  its  essence  before  it  reached 
Mr.  Pulitzer's  ear. 

As  it  was  getting  late,  and  as  I  knew 
that  Thwaites  would  be  on  tap  early  in  the 
morning,  for  .J.  P.  usually  breakfasted  be- 
fore nine,  and  the  "victim"  was  supposed 
to  have  had  his  own  breakfast  by  eight,  I 
left  the  villa  and  went  back  to  the  yacht. 

As  he  said  good-night,  Thwaites  gave  me 
a  copy  of  Tlie  Daily  Telegraph  and  advised 
me  to  read  it  carefully,  as  J.  P.  might  ask 
me  for  the  day's  news  during  the  drive  we 
were  to  take  the  following  morning. 

Before  going  to  sleep  I  glanced  through 
The  Daily  Telegraph  and  came  across  an 
article  which  gave  me  an  idea  for  establish- 
ing my  reputation  for  memory.  It  was  a 
note  about  the  death  duties  which  had  been 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  61 

collected  in  England  during  1910,  and  it 
gave  a  list  of  about  twenty  estates  on  which 
large  sums  had  been  paid.  The  list  included 
the  names  of  the  deceased  and  also  the 
amounts  on  which  probate  duty  had  been 
paid.  I  decided  to  commit  these  names  and 
figures  to  memory  and  to  take  an  occasion 
the  next  day  to  reel  them  off  to  J.  P. 

Punctually  at  eleven  o'clock  I  presented 
myself  at  the  villa  to  find,  to  my  dismay, 
J.  P.  seated  in  his  automobile  in  a  tower- 
ing rage.  What  sort  of  consideration  had 
I  for  liim  to  keep  him  waiting  for  half  an 
hour ! 

I  protested  that  eleven  o'clock  was  the 
hour  of  the  appointment.  I  was  absolutely 
wrong,  he  said,  half-past-ten  was  the  time, 
and  he  remembered  perfectly  naming  that 
hour,  because  he  wanted  a  long  drive  and 
he  had  an  engagement  with  Mr.  Paterson 
at  noon. 

*'I'm  awfully  sorry,"  I  began,  "if  I  mis- 
understood you,  but  really  .  .  ." 

He  dismissed  the  matter  abruptly  by  say- 
ing, "For  God's  sake,  don't  argue  about  it. 


62  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

Get  in  and  sit  next  to  me  so  that  I  can  hear 
you  talk." 

As  soon  as  we  had  got  clear  of  the  village, 
and  were  spinning  along  at  a  good  rate  on 
the  Corniche  road,  which  circles  the  Bay  of 
IMonaco,  high  on  the  mountain  side,  Mr. 
Pulitzer  began  to  put  me  through  my  paces. 

"Now,  Mr.  Ireland,"  he  began,  "you  will 
understand  that  if  any  arrangement  is  to 
be  concluded  between  us  I  must  explore  your 
brain,  your  character,  your  tastes,  your  sym- 
pathies, your  prejudices,  your  temper;  I 
must  find  out  if  you  have  tact,  patience,  a 
sense  of  humor,  the  gift  of  condensing  in- 
formation, and,  above  all,  a  respect,  a  love, 
a  passion  for  accuracy." 

I  began  to  speak,  but  he  interrupted  me 
before  I  had  got  six  words  out  of  my  mouth. 

"Wait!  Wait!"  he  cried,  "let  me  finish 
what  I  have  to  say.  You'll  find  this  busi- 
ness of  being  a  candidate  a  very  trying  and 
disagreeable  one ;  well,  it's  damned  disagree- 
able to  me,  too.  What  I  need  is  rest,  repose, 
quiet,  routine,  understanding,  sympathy, 
friendship,  yes,  my  God!  the  friendship  of 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  63 

those  around  me.  Mr.  Ireland,  I  can  do 
much,  I  can  do  everything  for  a  man  who 
will  be  my  friend.  I  can  give  him  power, 
I  can  give  him  wealth,  I  can  give  him  repu- 
tation, the  power,  the  wealth,  the  reputation 
which  come  to  a  man  who  speaks  to  a  million 
people  a  day  in  the  columns  of  a  great  paper. 
But  how  am  I  to  do  this?  I  am  blind,  I'm 
an  invalid;  how  am  I  to  know  whom  I  can 
trust?  I  don't  mean  in  money  matters; 
money's  nothing  to  me;  it  can  do  nothing 
for  me ;  I  mean  morally,  intellectually.  I've 
had  scores  of  people  pass  through  my  hands 
in  the  last  fifteen  years — Englishmen, 
Scotchmen,  Irishmen,  Welshmen,  Germans, 
Frenclmien,  Americans,  men  of  so-called 
high  family,  men  of  humble  birth,  men  from 
a  dozen  universities,  self-taught  men,  young 
men,  old  men,  and,  my  God!  what  have  I 
found?  Arrogance,  stupidity,  ingratitude, 
loose  thinking,  conceit,  ignorance,  laziness, 
indifference;  absence  of  tact,  discretion, 
courtesy,  manners,  consideration,  sympathy, 
devotion;  no  knowledge,  no  wisdom,  no  in- 
telligence, no  observation,  no  memory,  no 


64  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

insight,  no  understanding.  My  God!  I  can 
hardly  believe  my  own  experience  when  I 
think  of  it." 

Set  down  in  cold  print,  this  outburst  loses 
almost  every  trace  of  its  intense^  dramatic 
character.  Mr.  Pulitzer  spoke  as  though  he 
were  declaiming  a  part  in  a  highly  emotional 
play.  At  times  he  turned  toward  me,  his 
clenched  fists  raised  above  his  shoulders,  at 
times  he  threw  back  his  head,  flung  his  out- 
stretched hands  at  arms'  length  in  front  of 
him,  as  though  he  were  appealing  to  the 
earth,  to  the  sea,  to  the  air,  to  the  remote 
canopy  of  the  sky  to  hear  his  denunciation 
of  man's  inefficiency;  at  times  he  paused, 
laid  a  hand  on  my  arm,  and  fixed  liis  eye 
upon  me  as  if  he  expected  the  darkness  to 
yield  him  some  image  of  my  thought.  It 
w^as  almost  impossible  to  believe  at  such  a 
moment  that  he  was  totallj^  blind,  that  he 
could  not  distinguish  night  from  day. 

"Mind!"  he  continued,  raising  a  caution- 
ary finger,  "I'm  not  making  any  criticism 
of  my  present  staff ;  j^ou  may  consider  your- 
self veiy  lucky  if  I  find  you  to  have  a  quar- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  65 

ter  of  the  good  qualities  which  any  one  of 
them  has ;  and  let  me  tell  you  that  while  you 
are  with  me  you  will  do  well  to  observe  these 
gentlemen  and  to  try  and  model  yourself  on 
them. 

"However,  all  that  doesn't  matter  so  much 
in  your  case,  because  there's  no  question  of 
your  becoming  one  of  my  personal  staff. 
I  haven't  any  vacancy  at  present,  and  I  don't 
foresee  any.  What  I  want  you  for  is  some- 
thing quite  different." 

Imagine  my  amazement.  No  vacancy  on 
the  staff!  What  about  the  advertisement  I 
had  answered?  What  about  all  the  inter- 
views and  correspondence,  in  which  a  com- 
panionship had  been  the  only  thing  dis- 
cussed? What  could  the  totally  different 
thing  be  of  which  Mr.  Pulitzer  spoke? 

In  the  midst  of  my  confusion  Mr.  Pulitzer 
said,  "Look  out  of  the  window  and  tell  me 
what  you  see.  Remember  that  I  am  blind, 
and  try  and  make  me  get  a  mental  picture  of 
everything — everything,  you  understand ; 
never  think  that  anything  is  too  small  or 
insignificant  to  be  of  interest  to  me;  you 


66  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

can't  tell  what  may  interest  me;  always  de- 
scribe everything  with  the  greatest  minute- 
ness, every  cloud  in  the  sky,  every  shadow 
on  the  hillside,  every  tree,  every  house,  every 
dress,  every  wrinkle  on  a  face,  everything, 
everything!" 

I  did  my  best,  and  he  appeared  to  be 
pleased;  but  before  I  had  half  exhausted 
the  details  of  the  magnificent  scene  above 
and  below  us  he  stopped  me  suddenly  with 
a  request  that  I  should  tell  him  exactly  what 
had  occurred  from  the  time  I  had  answered 
his  advertisement  up  to  the  moment  of  my 
arrival  at  the  villa. 

This  demand  placed  me  in  rather  an  awk- 
ward predicament,  for  I  had  to  try  and 
reconcile  the  fact  that  the  advertisement  it- 
self as  well  as  all  my  conversations  with  his 
agents  and  with  his  son  had  been  directed 
toward  the  idea  of  a  companionship,  with 
his  positive  assertion  that  there  was  no  va- 
cancy on  his  personal  staff  and  that  he 
wanted  me  for  another,  and  an  undisclosed 
purpose.    Here  was  a  very  clear  opportu- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  67 

nity  for  destroying  my  reputation,  either  for 
tact  or  for  accuracy. 

There  was,  of  course,  only  one  thing  to 
do,  and  that  was  to  tell  liim  exactly  what 
had  taken  place.  This  I  did,  and  at  the  end 
of  my  recital  he  said,  "It's  simply  amazing 
how  anyone  can  get  a  matter  tangled  up  the 
way  you  have.  There  was  never  a  question 
of  your  becoming  one  of  my  companions. 
What  I  want  is  a  man  to  go  out  to  the 
Philippines  and  write  a  series  of  vigorous 
articles  showing  the  bungle  we've  made  of 
that  business,  and  paving  the  way  for  an 
agitation  in  favor  of  giving  the  Islands 
their  independence.  There'll  be  a  chance  of 
getting  that  done  if  we  elect  a  Democratic 
President  in  1912." 

"Well,  sir,"  I  replied,  "if  the  bungle  has 
been  as  bad  as  you  think  I  certainly  ought 
to  be  able  to  do  the  work  to  your  satisfac- 
tion. I'm  pretty  familiar  with  the  condi- 
tions of  tropical  life,  I've  written  a  good 
deal  on  the  subject,  I've  been  in  the  Philip- 
pines and  have  published  a  book  and  a  num- 
ber of  articles  about  them,  and,  although 


68  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

T  don't  take  as  gloomy  a  view  as  you  do 
about  the  administration  out  there,  I  found 
a  good  deal  to  criticize,  and  if  I  go  out  I 
can  certainly  describe  the  conditions  as  they 
are  now,  and  your  editorial  writers  can  put 
my  articles  to  whatever  use  they  may  wish." 
"You're  going  too  fast,"  he  said,  "and 
you're  altogether  too  cock-sure  of  your  abili- 
ties. You  mustn't  think  that  because  j^'ou've 
written  articles  for  the  London  Times  you 
are  competent  to  write  for  The  World.  It's 
a  very  different  matter.  The  American  peo- 
ple want  something  terse,  forcible,  pic- 
turesque, striking,  something  that  will  arrest 
their  attention,  enlist  their  sympathy,  arouse 
their  indignation,  stimulate  their  imagina- 
tion, convince  their  reason,  awaken  their 
conscience.  Why  should  I  accept  you  at 
your  ovn\  estimate?  You  don't  realize  the 
responsibility  I  have  in  this  matter.  The 
World  isn't  like  your  Times,  with  its  forty 
or  fifty  thousand  educated  readers.  It's  read 
by,  well,  say  a  million  people  a  day ;  and  it's 
my  duty  to  see  that  they  get  the  truth;  but 
that's  not  enough,  I've  got  to  put  it  before 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  69 

them  briefly  so  that  they  will  read  it,  clearly 
so  that  they  will  understand  it,  forcibly  so 
that  they  will  appreciate  it,  picturesquely 
so  that  they  w^ill  remember  it,  and,  above 
all,  accurately  so  that  they  may  be  wisely 
guided  by  its  light.  And  you  come  to  me, 
and  before  you've  been  here  a  day  you  ask 
me  to  entrust  you  with  an  important  mission 
which  concerns  the  integrity  of  my  paper, 
the  conscience  of  my  readers,  the  policy  of 
my  country,  no,  my  God!  you're  too  cock- 
sure of  yourself." 

By  this  time  Mr.  Pulitzer  had  worked 
himself  up  into  a  state  of  painful  excite- 
ment. His  forehead  was  damp  with  per- 
spiration, he  clasped  and  unclasped  his 
hands,  his  voice  became  louder  and  higher- 
pitched  from  moment  to  moment ;  but  when 
he  suddenly  stopped  speaking  he  calmed 
down  instantly. 

"You  shouldn't  let  me  talk  so  much,"  he 
said,  without,  however,  suggesting  any 
means  by  which  I  could  stop  him.  "What 
time  is  it?  Are  we  nearly  home?  Well,  Mr. 
Ireland,  I'll  let  you  off  for  the  afternoon; 


70  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

go  and  enjoy  yourself  and  forget  all  about 
me."  Then,  as  the  auto  drew  up  at  the  door 
of  the  villa,  "Come  up  to  dinner  about  seven 
and  try  to  be  amusing.  You  did  very  well 
last  night.  I  hope  you  can  keep  it  up.  It's 
most  important  that  anyone  who  is  to  live 
with  me  should  have  a  sense  of  humor.  I'd 
be  glad  to  keep  a  man  and  pay  him  a  hand- 
some salary  if  he  would  make  me  laugh  once 
a  day.    Well,  good-by  till  to-night." 


CHAPTER   III 

Life  at  Cap  Martin 

THERE  was  no  lack  of  humor  in  Mr. 
Pulitzer's  suggestion  that  I  should 
go  and  enjoy  myself  and  forget  him.  I 
went  down  to  the  yacht,  had  lunch  in  soli- 
tary state,  and  then,  selecting  a  comfortable 
chair  in  the  smoking-room,  settled  down  to 
think  things  over. 

It  soon  became  clear  to  me  that  J.  P.  was 
a  man  of  a  character  so  completely  outside 
the  range  of  my  experience  that  any  skill 
of  judgment  I  might  have  acquired  through 
contact  with  many  men  of  many  races  would 
avail  me  little  in  my  intercourse  with  him. 

That  he  was  arbitrary,  self-centered,  and 
exacting  mattered  little  to  me ;  it  was  a  com- 
bination of  qualities  which  rumor  had  led 
me  to  expect  in  him,  and  with  which  I  had 

71 


72  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

become  familiar  in  my  acquaintance  with 
men  of  wide  authority  and  outstanding  abil- 
ity. What  disturbed  me  was  that  his  blind- 
ness, his  ill  health,  and  his  suffering  had 
united  to  these  traits  an  intense  excitability 
and  a  morbid  nervousness. 

My  first  impulse  was  to  attribute  his 
capriciousness  to  a  weakening  of  his  brain 
power;  but  I  could  not  reconcile  this  view 
with  the  vigor  of  his  thought,  with  the  clear- 
ness of  his  expression,  with  the  amplitude 
of  his  knowledge,  with  the  scope  of  his  mem- 
ory as  they  had  been  disclosed  the  previous 
night  in  his  conversation  with  Paterson. 
No,  the  fact  w^as  that  I  had  not  found  the 
key  to  his  motives,  the  cipher  running 
tlirough  the  artificial  confusion  of  his  ac- 
tions. 

I  could  not  foresee  the  issue  of  the  ad- 
venture. In  the  meantime,  however,  the 
yacht  was  a  comfortable  home,  the  Cote 
d'Azur  was  a  new  field  of  observation,  J.  P. 
and  his  secretaries  were  extremely  interest- 
ing, the  honorarium  was  accumulating  stead- 
ily, and  in  the  background  Barbados  still 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  73 

slept  in  the  sunshine,  an  emerald  in  a  sapph- 
ire sea. 

During  the  afternoon  I  had  a  visit  from 
Jabez  E.  Dunningham,  the  major-domo.  I 
pay  tribute  to  him  here  as  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  men  I  have  ever  met,  an  opinion 
which  I  formed  after  months  of  daily  inter- 
course with  him.  He  was  an  Englishman, 
and  he  had  spent  nearly  twenty  years  with 
Mr.  Pulitzer,  traveling  with  him  everywhere, 
hardly  ever  separated  from  him  for  more 
than  a  few  hours,  and  he  was  more  closely  in 
his  confidence  than  anyone  outside  the 
family. 

He  was  capable  and  efficient  in  the  high- 
est degree.  His  duties  ranged  from  those 
of  a  nurse  to  those  of  a  diplomat.  He  pro- 
duced, at  a  moment's  notice,  as  a  conjuror 
produces  rabbits  and  goldfish,  the  latest  hot- 
water  bottle  from  a  village  pharmacy  in 
Elba,  special  trains  from  haughty  and  re- 
luctant officials  of  State  railways,  bales  of 
newspapers  mysteriously  collected  from 
clubs,  hotels,  or  consulates  in  remote  and 
microscopic  ports,  fruits  and  vegetables  out 


74  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

of  season,  rooms,  suites,  floors  of  hotels  at 
the  height  of  the  rush  in  the  most  crowded 
resorts,  or  a  dozen  cabins  in  a  steamer. 

He  could  open  telegraph  stations  and  post 
offices  when  they  were  closed  to  the  native 
nobility,  convert  the  eager  curiosity  of  port 
officials  into  a  trance-like  indifference,  or 
monopolize  the  services  of  a  whole  adminis- 
tration, if  the  comfort,  convenience,  or 
caprice  of  his  master  demanded  it. 

More  than  this;  if,  any  of  these  things 
having  been  done,  they  should  appear  un- 
desirable to  Mr.  Pulitzer,  Dunningham 
could  undo  them  wdth  the  same  magician- 
like ease  as  had  marked  their  achievement. 
A  wave  of  Mr.  Pulitzer's  hand  was  trans- 
lated into  action  by  Dunningham,  and  the 
whole  of  his  arrangements  disappeared  as 
completely  as  if  they  had  never  existed.  The 
slate  was  wiped  clean,  ready  in  an  instant 
to  receive  the  new  message  from  Mr.  Pulit- 
zer's will. 

Dunningham  had  come  to  offer  me  ad- 
vice. I  must  not  be  disturbed  by  the  ap- 
parent eccentricity  of  Mr.  Pulitzer's  con- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  75 

duct;  it  was  merely  part  of  Mr.  Pulitzer's 
fixed  policy  to  make  things  as  complicated 
and  difficult  as  possible  for  a  candidate.  By 
adopting  this  plan  he  was  able  to  discover 
very  quickly  whether  there  was  any  possi- 
bility that  a  new  man  would  suit  him.  If 
the  candidate  showed  impatience  or  bad 
temper  he  could  be  got  rid  of  at  once;  if 
he  showed  tact  and  good  humor  he  would 
graduate  into  another  series  of  tests,  and 
so  on,  step  by  step,  until  the  period  of  his 
trjang  out  was  ended  and  he  became  one  of 
the  staflT. 

A  man  of  my  intelligence  would,  of 
course,  appreciate  the  advantages  of  such  a 
method,  even  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
candidate,  for  once  a  candidate  had  passed 
the  testing  stage  he  would  find  his  relations 
with  Mr.  Pulitzer  much  pleasanter  and  his 
work  less  exacting,  whereas  if  he  found  at 
the  outset  that  the  conditions  were  not  pleas- 
ing to  him  he  could  retire  without  having 
wasted  much  time. 

One  thing  I  must  bear  in  mind,  namely, 
that  each  day  which  passed  without  Mr. 


76  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

Pulitzer  having  decided  against  a  candidate 
increased  the  candidate's  chances.  If  a  man 
was  to  be  rejected  it  was  usually  done  inside 
of  a  week  from  his  first  appearance  on  the 
scene. 

And,  by  the  way,  had  I  ever  noticed  how 
people  were  apt  to  think  that  blind  people 
were  deaf?  A  most  curious  thing;  really 
nothing  in  it.  Take  Mr.  Pulitzer,  for  ex- 
ample, so  far  from  his  being  deaf  he  had 
the  most  exquisite  sense  of  hearing,  in  fact 
he  heard  better  when  people  spoke  below 
rather  than  above  their  ordinary  tone. 

Thus,  Dunningham,  anxious,  in  his  mas- 
ter's interest,  to  allay  my  nervousness,  which 
reacted  disagreeably  on  Mr.  Pulitzer,  and 
to  make  me  lower  my  voice. 

I  went  up  to  the  villa  during  the  after- 
noon to  look  at  the  house  and,  if  possible, 
to  have  a  talk  with  some  of  the  secretaries. 

The  villa  lay  on  the  Western  slope  of  Cap 
JNIartin,  a  few  hundred  yards  from  the  Villa 
Cyrnos,  occupied  by  the  Empress  Eugenie. 
Seen  from  the  road  there  was  nothing  strik- 
ing in  its  appearance,  but  seen  from  the 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  77 

other  side  it  was  delightful,  recalling  the 
drop  scene  of  a  theater.  Situated  on  a  steep 
slope,  emhowered  in  trees,  its  broad  stone 
veranda  overhung  a  series  of  ornamental 
terraces  decorated  with  palms,  flowers,  stat- 
uary, and  fountains ;  and  where  these  ended 
a  jumble  of  rocks  and  stunted  pines  fell 
away  abruptly  to  the  blue  water  of  the  bay. 

The  house  was  large  and  well  designed, 
but  very  simple  in  its  furniture  and  decora- 
tions. The  upper  rooms  on  the  Western 
side  commanded  a  superb  view  of  the  Bay 
of  Monaco,  and  of  the  rugged  hillsides 
above  La  Turbie,  crowned  with  a  vague  out- 
line of  fortifications  against  the  sky. 

In  a  room  at  the  top  of  the  house  I  found 
one  of  the  secretaries,  an  Englishman,  Mr. 
George  Craven,  formerly  in  the  Indian 
Civil  Service  in  Rajputana.  He  was  en- 
gaged in  auditing  the  accounts  of  the  yacht, 
but  he  readily  fell  in  with  my  suggestion 
that  we  should  take  a  stroll. 

"Right-ho!"  he  said.  "I'm  sick  of  these 
beastly  accounts.  But  we  must  find  out 
what  J.  P.'s  doing  first." 


78  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

It  appeared  that  J.  P.  had  motored  over 
to  Monte  Carlo  to  hear  a  concert,  and  that 
he  wasn't  expected  back  for  an  hour  or  more. 
As  we  stopped  in  the  entrance  hall  to  get 
our  hats  I  struck  a  match  on  the  sole  of  my 
shoe,  intending  to  Ught  a  cigarette. 

"By  Jove!  Don't  do  that,  for  Heaven's 
sake,"  said  Craven,  "or  there'll  be  a  fright- 
ful row  when  J.  P.  comes  in.  He  can't 
stand  cigarette  smoke,  and  he's  got  a  sense 
of  smell  as  keen  as  a  setter's." 

We  went  into  the  garden  and  followed  a 
narrow  path  which  led  down  to  the  water- 
side. We  talked  about  J.  P.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  J.  P.  was  the  principal  topic  of 
conversation  whenever  two  of  his  secretaries 
found  themselves  together. 

Craven,  however,  had  only  been  with  J.  P. 
for  a  few  weeks,  having  been  one  of  the 
batch  sifted  out  of  the  six  hundi'ed  who 
had  answered  the  Times  advertisement.  He 
was  almost  as  much  in  the  dark  as  I  was 
in  regard  to  the  real  J.  P.  that  existed 
somewhere  behind  the  mask  which  was  al- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  79 

ways  held  out  in  front  of  every  emotion, 
every  thought,  every  intention. 

The  life  was  difficult,  he  found,  and  ex- 
tremely laborious.  "V\Tien  it  suited  his  book 
J.  P.  could  be  one  of  the  most  fascinating 
and  entertaining  of  men,  but  when  it  didn't, 
well,  he  wasn't.  The  truth  was  that  you 
could  never  tell  what  he  really  thought  at 
any  moment;  it  made  you  feel  as  though 
you  were  blind  and  not  he ;  you  found  your- 
self groping  around  all  the  time  for  a  good 
lead  and  coming  unexpectedly  up  against  a 
stone  wall. 

"I've  been  with  him  a  couple  of  months," 
he  said,  "and  I  haven't  the  slightest  idea 
whether  he  thinks  me  a  good  sort  or  a  silly 
ass,  and  I  don't  suppose  I  ever  shall  know. 
Bv  Jove,  there  he  is  now!"  as  we  heard  the 
crunch  of  tires  on  the  drive.  "Excuse  me  if 
I  make  a  run  for  it;  he  may  want  me  any 
minute.    See  you  later." 

At  dinner  that  night  Mr.  Pulitzer  de- 
voted his  whole  attention  to  laying  bare  the 
vast  areas  of  ignorance  on  the  map  of  my 
information.    He  carried  me  from  country 


80  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

to  country,  from  century  to  century, 
through  history,  art,  literature,  biography, 
economics,  music,  the  drama,  and  current 
poHtics.  Whenever  he  hit  upon  some  small 
spot  where  my  investigations  had  lingered 
and  where  my  memory  served  me  he  left  it 
immediately,  with  the  remark,  "Well,  I 
don't  care  about  that;  that  doesn't  amount 
to  anything,  anyhow." 

It  was  worse  than  useless  to  make  any 
pretense  of  knowing  things,  for  if  you  said 
you  knew  a  play,  for  instance,  J.  P.  would 
say,  "Good!  Now  begin  at  the  second  scene 
of  the  third  act,  where  the  curtain  rises  on 
the  two  conspirators  in  the  coiu-tyard  of  the 
hotel;  just  carry  it  along  from  there" — and 
if  j^ou  didn't  know  it  thoroughly  you  were 
soon  in  difficulties. 

His  method  was  nicely  adjusted  to  his 
needs,  for  he  was  concerned  most  of  the 
time  to  get  entertainment  as  well  as  infor- 
mation; and  he  was,  therefore,  amused  by 
exposing  your  ignorance  when  he  was  not 
informed  by  uncovering  your  knowledge. 
Indeed,  nothing  put  him  in  such  good  humor 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  81 

as  to  discover  a  cleft  in  your  intellectual 
armor,  provided  that  you  really  possessed 
some  talent,  faculty,  or  resource  which  was 
useful  to  him. 

My  dinner,  considered  as  a  dinner,  was  as 
great  a  failure  as  my  conversation,  consid- 
ered as  an  exhibition  of  learning.  I  got  no 
more  than  a  hasty  mouthful  now  and  again, 
and  got  that  only  through  a  device  often 
resorted  to  by  the  secretaries  under  such  cir- 
cumstances, but  which  seldom  met  with  much 
success. 

J.  P.  himself  had  to  eat,  and  from  time 
to  time  the  butler,  who  always  stood  behind 
J.  P.'s  chair,  and  attended  to  him  only, 
would  take  advantage  of  an  instant's  pause 
in  the  conversation  to  say,  "Your  fish  is  get- 
ting cold,  sir." 

This  would  divert  J.  P.'s  attention  from 
his  victim  long  enough  to  allow  one  of  the 
other  men  to  break  in  with  a  remark  de- 
signed to  draw  J.  P.'s  fire.  It  worked  once 
in  a  while,  but  as  a  rule  it  had  no  effect 
whatever  beyond  making  J.  P.  hurry 
through  the  course  so  that  he  could  renew 


82  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

his  attack  at  the  point  where  he  had  sus- 
pended it. 

On  the  particular  occasion  I  am  describ- 
ing I  was  fortunate  enough  toward  the  end 
of  dinner  to  regain  some  of  the  ground  I 
had  lost  in  my  disorderly  flight  across  the 
field  of  scholarship.  One  of  the  secretaries 
seized  an  opportunity  to  refer  to  the  British 
death  duties.  I  had  intended  to  arrange 
for  the  introduction  of  this  topic,  but  had 
forgotten  to  do  so.  It  was  just  sheer  good 
luck,  and  I  made  signs  to  the  gentleman  to 
keep  it  up.  He  did  so,  and  the  moment  he 
ceased  speaking  I  took  up  the  tale.  It  was 
a  good  subject,  for  J.  P.  was  interested  in 
the  question  of  death  duties. 

After  a  preliminary  flourish  I  began  to 
reel  ofl*  the  figures  I  had  committed  to  mem- 
ory the  previous  night.  Before  I  had  got 
very  far  Mr.  Pulitzer  cried. 

"Stop!    Are  you  reading  those  figures?" 

"No,"  I  replied.  "I  read  them  over  last 
night  in  the  Daily  Telegraph/* 

"My  God!  Are  you  giving  them  from 
memory?    Haven't  you  got  a  note  of  them 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  83 

in  your  hand?  Hasn't  he?  Hasn't  he? 
.  .  ."  appealing  to  the  table. 

Reassured  on  this  point  he  said,  "Well, 
go  on,  go  on.    This  interests  me." 

As  soon  as  I  had  finished  he  turned  to 
Craven  and  said,  "Go  and  get  that  paper, 
and  find  the  article." 

When  Craven  returned  with  it,  he  con- 
tinued, "Now,  Mr.  Ireland,  go  over  those 
figures  again;  and  you,  Mr.  Craven,  check 
them  off  and  see  if  they're  correct.  Now, 
play  fair,  no  tricks!" 

I  had  made  two  mistakes,  which  were  re- 
ported as  soon  as  they  were  spoken.  At 
the  end  Mr.  Pulitzer  said: 

"Well,  you  see,  you  hadn't  got  them 
right,  after  all.  But  that's  not  so  bad. 
With  a  memory  like  that  you  might  have 
known  something  by  now  if  you'd  only  had 
the  diligence  to  read." 

My  second  score  was  made  just  at  the 
end  of  dinner,  or  rather  when  dinner  had 
been  finished  some  time  and  J.  P.  was  lin- 
gering at  table  over  his  cigar.  The  question 
of  humor  came  up,  and  someone  remarked 


84  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

how  curious  it  was  that  one  of  the  favorite 
amusements  of  the  American  humorist 
should  be  to  make  fun  of  the  Enghsliman 
for  his  lacii  of  humor — "Laugh,  and  all  the 
world  laughs  with  you,  except  the  English- 
man," and  so  on.  The  usual  defenses  were 
made — Hood,  Thackeray,  Gilbert,  Calver- 
ley,  etc. — and  then  Punch  was  referred  to. 

This  gave  me  the  chance  of  repeating, 
more  or  less  accurately,  a  paragraph  which 
appeared  in  Punch  some  years  ago,  and 
which  I  always  recite  when  that  delightful 
periodical  is  slandered  in  my  hearing.  It 
ran  something  after  this  fashion: 

"One  of  our  esteemed  contemporaries  is 
very  much  worked  up  in  its  mind  about 
Mr.  Balfour's  foreign  policy,  which  it  com- 
pares to  that  of  the  camel,  which,  when  pur- 
sued, buries  its  head  in  the  sand.  We  quite 
agree  with  our  esteemed  contemporary  about 
Mr.  Balfour's  foreign  policy,  but  we  fear 
it  is  getting  its  metaphors  mixed.  Surely  it 
is  not  thinking  of  the  camel  which,  when 
pursued,  buries  its  head  in  the  sand,  but  of 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  85 

the  ostrich  which,  when  pursued,  runs  its  eye 
through  a  needle." 

It  was  a  lucky  hit.  No  one  had  heard  it 
before,  and  our  party  broke  up  with  Mr. 
Pulitzer  in  high  good  humor. 

So  the  days  passed.  I  saw  a  great  deal  of 
]Mr.  Pulitzer  and  went  through  many  agon- 
izing hours  of  cross-examination;  but  grad- 
ually matters  came  round  to  the  point  where 
we  discussed  the  possibility  of  my  becoming 
a  member  of  his  personal  staff.  He  thought 
that  there  was  some  hope  that,  if  he  put  me 
through  a  rigorous  training,  I  might  suit 
him,  but  before  it  could  even  be  settled  that 
such  an  attempt  should  be  made  many  things 
would  have  to  be  cleared  up. 

In  the  first  place,  I  would  understand 
what  extreme  caution  was  necessary  for  him 
in  making  a  selection.  There  was  not  only 
the  question  of  whether  I  could  make  myself 
useful  to  him,  and  the  question  of  whether 
I  could  be  trusted  in  a  relationship  of  such 
a  confidential  nature,  there  remained  the 
very  important  question  of  whether  I  was  a 
fit  person  to  associate  with  the  lady  mem- 


86  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

bers  of  his  family,  M'ho  spent  some  portion 
of  each  year  with  him. 

This  matter  was  discussed  very  frankly, 
and  was  then  shelved  pending  a  reference 
to  a  number  of  people  in  England  and 
America  at  whose  homes  I  had  been  a  guest, 
and  where  the  household  included  ladies. 

At  the  end  of  a  week  the  yacht  was  sent 
to  Marseilles  to  coal  in  preparation  for  a 
cruise,  and  I  went  to  stay  at  an  hotel  near 
the  villa.     It  was  a  change  for  the  worse. 

By  the  time  the  yacht  returned  I  had  had 
some  opportunity  of  observing  the  routine 
of  life  at  the  villa.  After  breakfast  Mr. 
Pulitzer  went  for  a  drive,  accompanied  by 
one,  or  occasionally  by  two,  of  the  secre- 
taries. During  this  drive  he  received  a 
rough  summary  of  the  morning's  news,  the 
papers  having  been  gone  over  and  marked 
either  the  night  before  or  while  he  was  hav- 
ing his  breakfast. 

As  he  seldom  let  us  know  in  advance 
which  of  us  he  would  call  upon  for  the  first 
presentation  of  the  news,  and  as  he  was 
liable  to  change  his  mind  at  the  last  minute 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  87 

when  he  had  named  somebody  the  previous 
night,  we  had  all  of  us  to  go  through  the 
papers  \^'ith  great  care,  so  that  we  might  be 
prepared  if  we  were  called  upon. 

On  returning  from  his  drive  Mr.  Pulitzer 
would  either  sit  in  the  library  and  dictate 
letters  and  cablegrams,  or  he  would  have  the 
news  gone  over  in  detail,  or,  if  the  state  of 
his  health  forbade  the  mental  exertion  in- 
volved in  the  intense  concentration  with 
which  he  absorbed  what  was  read  to  him 
from  the  papers,  he  would  go  for  a  ride, 
accompanied  by  a  groom  and  by  one  of  the 
secretaries.  When  he  went  to  Europe  he 
usually  sent  over  in  advance  some  horses 
from  his  own  stable,  as  he  was  very  fond 
of  riding  and  could  not  trust  himself  on  a 
strange  horse. 

After  the  ride,  lunch,  at  which  the  conver- 
sation generally  took  a  more  serious  turn 
than  at  dinner,  for  at  night  Mr.  Pulitzer 
disliked  any  discussion  of  matters  which 
were  likely  to  arouse  his  interest  very  much 
or  to  stir  his  emotions,  for  he  found  it  diffi- 
cult to  get  his  mind  calmed  down  so  that 


88  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

he  could  sleep.  Even  in  regard  to  lunch  we 
were  sometimes  warned  in  advance,  either 
by  Dunningham  or  by  the  secretary  who 
had  left  him  just  before  lunch  was  served, 
that  Mr.  Pulitzer  wished  the  conversation 
to  be  light  and  uncontroversial. 

Immediately  after  lunch  Mr.  Pulitzer  re- 
tired to  his  bedroom  with  Herr  Friederich 
Mann,  the  German  secretary,  and  was  read 
to,  chiefly  German  plays,  until  he  fell  asleep, 
or  until  he  had  had  an  hour  or  so  of  rest. 

By  four  o'clock  he  was  ready  to  go  out 
again,  riding,  if  he  had  not  had  a  ride  in 
the  morning,  or  driving,  with  an  occasional 
walk  for  perhaps  half-an-hour,  the  auto- 
mobile always  remaining  within  call.  As  a 
rule  he  spent  an  hour  before  dinner  listen- 
ing to  someone  read,  a  novel,  a  biography, 
or  what  not,  according  to  his  mood. 

At  dinner  the  conversation  usually  ran 
along  the  lines  of  what  was  being  read  to 
him  by  the  various  secretaries  or  of  such 
topics  in  the  day's  news  as  were  of  an  un- 
exciting nature.  The  meal  varied  greatly 
in  length.     If  J.  P.  was  feeling  tired,  or 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  89 

out  of  sorts,  he  eat  his  dinner  quickly  and 
left  us,  taking  somebody  along  to  read  to 
him  until  he  was  ready  to  go  to  bed.  But, 
if  he  was  in  good  form,  and  an  interesting 
topic  was  started,  or  if  he  was  in  a  remi- 
niscent mood  and  wanted  to  talk,  dinner 
would  last  from  half -past-seven  to  nine,  or 
even  later. 

I  shall  deal  in  another  place  with  the  dif- 
ferent phases  of  the  conversation  and  read- 
ing which  formed  so  large  a  part  of  our 
duties,  but  I  may  refer  here  to  various  in- 
cidents of  our  routine  and  to  some  things 
by  which  our  routine  was  occasionally  dis- 
turbed. 

Mr.  Pulitzer  was  very  fond  of  walking. 
His  usual  practice  was  to  leave  the  villa  in 
the  automobile  and  drive  either  down  to  the 
plage  at  Mentone  or  up  the  hill  to  a  point 
about  midway  between  Cap  Martin  and  the 
Tower  of  Augustus.  When  he  reached  the 
spot  he  had  selected  he  took  the  arm  of  a 
secretary  and  promenaded  backward  and 
forward  over  a  distance  of  five  hundred 


V 

90  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

yards,  until  he  felt  tired,  when  the  auto- 
mobile was  signaled  and  we  drove  home. 

Each  of  his  favorite  spots  for  walking 
had  its  peculiar  disadvantages  for  his  com- 
panion. Speaking  for  myself  I  can  say  that 
I  dreaded  these  walks  more  than  any  other 
of  my  duties. 

If  we  went  on  the  hillside  I  had  to  keep 
the  most  alert  and  unrelaxing  lookout  for 
automobiles.  They  came  dashing  round  the 
sharp  curves  with  a  roar  and  a  scream,  and 
these  distracting  noises  always  made  Mr. 
Pulitzer  stop  dead  still  as  though  he  were 
rooted  to  the  ground. 

I  understand  that  Mr.  Pulitzer  was  never 
actually  hit  by  an  automobile,  and,  of  course, 
his  blindness  saved  him  from  tlie  agony  of 
apprehension  which  his  companion  suffered, 
for  he  could  not  see  the  narrovmess  of  his 
escape.  But  I  was  out  with  him  one  day  on 
the  Upper  Corniche  road  when  two  automo- 
biles going  in  opposite  directions  at  reck- 
less speed  came  upon  us  at  a  sharp  turn, 
and  I  may  frankly  confess  that  I  was  never 
so  frightened  in  my  life.     Had  we  been 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  91 

alone  I  am  certain  we  would  have  been 
killed,  but  fortunately  Mann  was  with  us, 
and  it  was  on  his  arm  that  J.  P.  was  lean- 
ing at  the  critical  moment.  Mann,  who  had 
the  advantage  of  long  experience,  acted  in- 
stantly with  the  utmost  presence  of  mind. 
He  made  a  quick  sign  to  me  to  look  out  for 
myself,  and  then  pushed  ^Ir.  Pulitzer  al- 
most off  his  feet  up  against  the  high  cliff 
which  rose  above  the  inner  edge  of  the  road. 

The  machines  were  out  of  sight  before 
we  could  realize  that  we  were  safe.  I  ex- 
pected an  explosion  from  J.  P.  Nothing  of 
the  kind!  He  acted  then,  as  I  always  saw 
him  act  when  there  was  any  actual  danger 
or  real  trouble  of  any  kind,  with  perfect 
calmness  and  self-possession. 

The  intolerable  nerv^ous  strain  of  these 
walks  on  the  hillside  was  accompanied  by 
a  mental  strain  almost  as  distressing.  It 
would  have  been  bad  enough  if  one's  only 
responsibility  had  been  to  keep  Mr.  Pulitzer 
from  being  crushed  against  the  hillside,  or 
being  run  over;  but  this  was  only  half  the 
problem.    The  other  half  was  to  keep  up  a 


92  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

continual  stream  of  conversation — not  light, 
airy  nothings,  but  a  solid  body  of  carefully 
prepared  facts — in  a  tone  of  voice  which 
should  fail  to  convey  to  J.  P.  the  slightest 
indication  of  your  nervousness. 

When  we  walked  on  the  plage  at  Men- 
tone,  the  difficulties  were  of  another  kind. 
Here  there  was  always  more  or  less  of  a 
crowd,  and  as  the  paved  promenade  was 
narrow,  and  as  very  few  people  had  the  in- 
telligence to  realize  that  the  tall,  striking 
figure  leaning  on  his  companion's  arm  was 
that  of  a  blind  man,  and  as  fewer  still  had 
the  courtesy  to  step  aside  if  they  did  realize 
it,  our  walk  was  a  constant  dodging  in  and 
out  among  curious  gazers  interested  in  star- 
ing at  the  gaunt,  impressive  invalid  with 
the  large  black  spectacles. 

Conversation  was,  of  course,  extremely 
difficult  under  such  circumstances;  and  oc- 
casionally things  were  made  worse  by  some 
stranger  stopping  squarely  in  front  of  us 
and  addressing  Mr.  Pulitzer  by  name,  for 
he  was  a  notable  personage  in  the  place  and 
was  well  known  by  sight. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  93 

When  accosted  in  this  manner,  Mr.  Pulit- 
zer always  showed  signs  of  extreme  ner- 
vousness. He  would  stamp  his  foot,  raise 
the  clenched  fist  of  his  disengaged  arm 
menacingly,  and  cry,  "My  God!  What's 
this?  What's  this?  Tell  him  to  go  away. 
I  won't  tolerate  this  intrusion.  Tell  him  I'll 
have  him  arrested." 

More  than  once  I  had  to  push  a  man  off 
the  promenade  and  make  faces  at  him  em- 
bodying all  that  was  possible  by  such  means 
in  the  way  of  threats  to  do  him  bodily  in- 
jury. It  was  impossible  to  argue  with  these 
impudent  intruders,  because  anything  like 
an  altercation  on  a  public  road  would  have 
meant  two  or  three  days  of  misery  for  Mr. 
Pulitzer,  in  consequence  of  the  excitement 
and  apprehension  he  would  suif  er  in  such 
an  affair.  It  was  always  with  a  feeling  of 
intense  relief  that  I  saw  J.  P.  safely  back 
at  the  villa  after  our  walks. 

Although  Mr.  Pulitzer's  intellectual  in- 
terests covered  almost  every  phase  of  human 
life,  there  was  nothing  from  which  he  de- 
rived more  pleasure  than  from  music.    Once, 


94  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

or  perhaps  twice  a  week,  he  motored  over 
to  Monte  Carlo,  or  even  as  far  as  Nice,  to 
attend  a  concert.  On  such  occasions  he  al- 
ways took  at  least  two  companions  with  him, 
so  that  he  never  sat  next  to  a  stranger. 

He  preferred  a  box  for  his  party,  but, 
failing  that,  the  seats  were  always  secured 
on  the  broad  cross-aisle,  so  that  he  would  not 
have  to  rise  when  anyone  wished  to  pass  in 
front  of  him.  He  liked  to  arrive  a  few 
minutes  before  the  concert  commenced,  and 
one  of  us  would  read  the  program  to  him. 
He  had  an  excellent  memory  for  music,  and 
his  taste  was  broad  enough  to  embrace  al- 
most everything  good  from  Bach  to  Wag- 
ner. He  was  a  keen  critic  of  a  performance, 
and  in  the  intervals  between  the  pieces  he 
criticized  the  playing  from  the  standpoint 
of  his  musical  experience. 

One  movement  was  played  too  loud,  an- 
other too  fast ;  in  one  the  brass  had  drowned 
a  delightful  passage  for  the  violas,  which 
he  had  heard  and  admired  the  year  before 
in  Vienna;  in  another  the  brasses  had  been 


JOSEPH    PULITZER 
AT   MONTE    CARLO,   I91I 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  95 

subdued  to  a  point  where  the  theme  lost  its 
distinction. 

It  was  his  habit  to  beat  time  with  one 
hand  and  to  sway  his  head  gently  backward 
and  forward  when  he  heard  a  slow,  familiar 
melody.  When  something  very  stirring  was 
played,  the  Rakoczy  March,  for  instance, 
or  the  overture  to  Die  Meister singer ^  he 
would  mark  the  down  beat  with  his  clenched 
fist,  and  throw  his  head  back  as  if  he  were 
going  to  shout. 

I  was  tempted  at  first  to  believe  that,  in 
the  concert  room,  when  one  of  his  favorite 
pieces  was  being  played,  and  his  hand  rose 
and  fell  in  exact  accord  with  the  conductor's 
baton,  or  when,  with  his  head  in  the  air  and 
his  mouth  half  open,  he  thumped  his  knee 
at  the  beginning  of  each  bar,  he  was  ab- 
sorbed in  the  music  to  the  exclusion  of  all 
his  worries,  perplexities,  and  suff'ering. 

But,  after  he  had  once  or  twice  turned  to 
me  in  a  flash  as  the  last  note  of  a  symphony 
lingered  before  the  outburst  of  applause  and 
asked,  "Did  you  remember  to  tell  Dunning- 
ham  to  have  dinner  served  a  quarter  of  an 


96  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

hour  later  this  evening?"  or  "Did  Thwaites 
say  anything  to  you  about  when  he  expected 
those  cables  from  New  York?" — I  learned 
that  even  at  such  times  J.  P.  never  lost  the 
thread  of  his  existence,  never  freed  himself 
from  the  slavery  of  his  affairs. 

Twice  during  the  ten  days  immediately 
preceding  our  long  promised  cruise  in  the 
Mediterranean  we  made  short  trips  on  the 
yacht.  We  went  to  bed  some  nights  with 
all  our  plans  apparently  settled  for  a  week 
ahead.  At  eight  o'clock  the  next  morning 
Dunningham  would  bring  J.  P.  down  to 
breakfast  and  then  announce  that  every- 
body was  to  be  on  board  the  yacht  by  mid- 
day, as  J.  P.  had  slept  badly  and  felt 
the  need  of  sea  air  and  the  complete  quiet 
wliich  could  be  had  only  on  board  the 
Liberty. 

There  would  be  a  great  packing  of 
trunks,  not  only  those  devoted  to  the  per- 
sonal belongings  of  the  staff,  but  trunks 
for  newspaper  files,  encyclopedias,  maga- 
zines, novels,  histories,  correspondence,  and 
so  on. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  97 

The  chef  and  his  assistants,  the  butler  and 
his  assistants,  the  major  domo,  and  the  sec- 
retaries would  leave  the  villa  in  a  string  of 
carriages,  followed  by  cartloads  of  baggage, 
and  install  themselves  on  the  yacht. 

Or  the  cause  of  our  sudden  departure 
might  be  that  Mr.  Pulitzer  was  feeling 
nervous  and  out  of  sorts  and  was  expecting 
important  letters  or  cables  which  were  sure 
to  excite  him  and  make  him  worse.  On  such 
occasions  Dunningham,  who  was  one  of  the 
few  people  who  had  any  influence  whatever 
over  Mr.  Pulitzer,  would  urge  an  instant 
flight  on  the  yacht  as  the  only  means  of 
safeguarding  J.  P.'s  health.  He  knew  that 
if  we  stayed  ashore  no  power  on  earth  could 
prevent  Mr.  Pulitzer  from  reading  his 
cables  and  letters  when  they  arrived.  Once 
out  at  sea  we  were  completely  cut  off  from 
communication  with  the  shore,  for  we  had 
no  wireless  apparatus,  and  Mr.  Pulitzer 
would  settle  down  and  get  some  rest. 

More  than  once,  however,  I  saw  all  the 
preparations  made  for  a  short  cruise,  every- 
body on  board,  the  captain  on  the  bridge. 


98  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

the  table  laid  for  lunch,  a  man  stationed  at 
the  stem  to  report  the  automobile  as  soon 
as  it  came  in  sight,  and  at  the  last  moment 
a  messenger  arrive  countermanding  every- 
thing and  ordering  everybody  back  to  the 
villa  as  fast  as  they  could  go. 

These  sudden  changes  were  sometimes  re- 
versed. We  would  arrive  at  Mentone  in  the 
morning.  J.  P.  would  announce  his  inten- 
tion of  spending  a  week  there.  With  this 
apparently  settled,  J.  P.  goes  ashore  for  a 
ride,  the  procession  makes  its  way  to  the 
villa,  the  trunks  are  unpacked,  the  chef  be- 
gins to  ply  his  art,  the  captain  of  the  yacht 
goes  ahead  with  such  washing  do^vn  and 
painting  as  are  needed,  the  chief  engineer 
seizes  the  chance  of  making  some  small  en- 
gine-room repairs — no  ordinary  ship's  work 
of  any  kind  was  allowed  when  J.  P.  was  on 
board,  the  slightest  noise  or  the  faintest  odor 
of  paint  being  strictly  forbidden — and  later 
in  the  day  the  news  comes  that  Mr.  Pulitzer 
will  be  aboard  again  in  two  hours  and  will 
expect  everything  to  be  ready  to  make  an 
immediate  start. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  99 

These  short  cruises  might  last  only  for  a 
night,  or  they  might  extend  to  a  day  or  two. 
Our  custom  was  to  steam  straight  out  to  sea 
and  then  patrol  the  coast  backward  and 
forward  between  Bordighera  and  Cannes, 
without  losing  sight  of  land. 

The  life  at  Cap  Martin  was  sufficiently 
arduous,  even  for  those  who  had  after  long 
experience  with  J.  P.  learned  to  get  through 
the  day  with  some  economy  of  effort.  To 
me,  new  to  the  work,  constantly  under  the 
double  pressure  of  Mr.  Pulitzer's  cross-ex- 
aminations and  of  the  task  of  supplying, 
however  inefficiently,  the  place  of  a  secretary 
who  was  away  on  sick  leave,  the  whole  thing 
was  a  nightmare.  I  was  in  a  dazed  condi- 
tion; everything  impressed  itself  upon  me 
with  the  vividness  of  a  dream,  and  eluded 
my  attempts  at  analysis,  just  as  the  delusive 
order  of  our  sleeping  visions  breaks  up  into 
topsyturvydom  as  soon  as  we  try  to  recon- 
struct it  in  the  light  of  day. 

I  spent  in  all  about  a  month  at  Cap  Mar- 
tin, staying  sometimes  on  the  yacht  and 
sometunes  at  an  hotel,  and  during  that  time 


100         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

I  worked  practically  every  day  from  eight 
in  the  morning  until  ten  or  eleven  at  night. 
I  use  the  word  "work"  to  include  the  hours 
spent  with  ^Ir.  Pulitzer  as  well  as  those  de- 
voted to  preparing  material  for  him.  In- 
deed, the  time  given  to  meals  and  to  drives 
and  walks  with  J.  P.  was  much  more  ex- 
hausting than  that  spent  in  reading  and  in 
making  notes. 

The  only  recreation  I  had  during  this 
period  was  one  day  on  leave  at  Nice  and  half 
a  day  at  Monaco;  hut  there  was  very  little 
enjoyment  to  be  got  out  of  these  visits,  be- 
cause I  was  under  orders  to  bring  back  mi- 
nute descriptions  of  Nice  and  of  the  Insti- 
tute of  Marine  Biology  at  Monaco. 

Engaged  on  such  missions,  the  passers-by, 
the  houses,  the  shops,  the  fishes  and  marine 
vegetables  in  their  tanks,  the  blue  sky  over- 
head, the  blue  sea  at  my  feet  assumed  a  new 
aspect  to  me.  They  were  no  longer  parts 
of  my  own  observation,  to  be  remembered 
or  forgotten  as  chance  determined,  they  be- 
longed to  some  one  else,  to  the  blind  man  in 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  101 

whose  service  I  was  pledged  to  a  vicarious 
absorption  of  "material." 

I  found  myself  counting  the  black  spots 
on  a  fish's  back,  the  steps  leading  up  to 
Monaco  on  its  hill,  the  number  of  men  and 
women  in  the  Grand  Salon  at  Monte  Carlo, 
of  men  with  mustaches,  of  clean-shaven  men, 
of  men  with  beards  in  the  restaurants,  of 
vessels  in  sight  from  the  terrace,  of  every- 
thing, in  fact,  which  seemed  capable  of  fur- 
nishing a  sentence  or  of  starting  up  a  dis- 
cussion. 

Once  or  twice  I  ran  over  late  at  night  to 
Monte  Carlo,  and  occasionally  Thwaites 
and  I  met  after  ten  o'clock  at  the  Casino  of 
Mentone  to  play  bowls  or  try  our  luck  at 
the  tables ;  but  the  spirit  of  J.  P.  never  failed 
to  attend  upon  these  dismal  efforts  at  amuse- 
ment. If  I  heard  an  epigram,  vdtnessed 
an  interesting  incident,  or  observed  any  curi- 
ous sight,  out  came  my  note  book  and  pencil 
and  the  matter  was  dedicated  to  the  service 
of  the  morrow's  duties. 

Finally,  after  several  false  starts,  we  all 


102         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

found  ourselves  on  the  yacht  with  the  pros- 
pect of  spending  most  of  our  time  aboard 
until  Mr.  Pulitzer  sailed  for  liis  annual  visit 
to  America. 


CHAPTER   IV, 

Yachting  in  the  Mediterranean 

TAKEN  at  its  face  value  a  month  in 
the  Mediterranean,  on  board  one  of 
the  finest  yachts  afloat,  with  visits  to  Corsica, 
Elba,  Nice,  Cannes,  Naples,  Genoa,  Syra- 
cuse, and  the  Pirseus,  should  give  promise 
of  a  picturesque  and  entertaining  record  of 
sight-seeing,  the  kind  of  journal  in  which 
the  views  of  Baedeker  and  of  your  local  cab 
driver  are  blended,  in  order  that  the  aroma 
of  foreign  travel  may  be  wafted  to  the  nos- 
trils of  your  fresh-water  cousins. 

What  my  narrative  lacks  of  this  flavor 
of  luxurious  vagrancy  must  be  supplied  by 
the  peculiar  interest  of  a  cruise  which  vio- 
lated eveiy  tradition  of  the  annals  of  yacht- 
ing, and  created  precedents  which  in  all  hu- 

103 


104  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

man  probability  will  never  be  followed  so 
long  as  iron  floats  on  water. 

It  was  part  of  Mr.  Pulitzer's  scheme  of 
nautical  life  to  shroud  all  his  movements  in 
mystery.  One  result  of  this  was  that  when 
we  were  on  the  yacht  we  never  knew  where 
we  were  going  until  we  got  there.  The 
compass-course  at  any  moment  betrayed 
nothing  of  Mr.  Pulitzer's  intentions,  for 
we  might  turn  in  at  night  with  the  ship  head- 
ing straight  for  Naples  and  wake  up  in  the 
morning  to  find  ourselves  three  miles  south 
of  the  Genoa  lighthouse. 

Apart  from  Mr.  Pulitzer's  fancy,  our  er- 
ratic maneuvers  were  affected  by  our  need 
to  make  good  weather  out  of  whatever  wind 
we  encountered,  on  the  one  hand  because 
J.  P.,  though  an  excellent  sailor,  disliked  the 
rolling  produced  by  a  beam  sea,  since  it  in- 
terfered with  his  walking  on  deck,  and  on 
the  other  hand,  because  several  of  the  secre- 
taries suffered  from  sea-sickness  the  mo- 
ment we  were  off  an  even  keel. 

Mr.  Pulitzer  was  not  a  man  prone  to  be 
placated  by  excuses;  but  he  had  come  to 


JOSEPH    PULITZER  AND    ONE    OF    HIS    SECRETARIES 
ON    THE    DECK    OF   THE  "  LIBERTY " 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  105 

realize  that  neither  a  sense  of  duty  nor  the 
hope  of  reward,  neither  fear  nor  courage, 
can  make  an  agreeable  companion  out  of  a 
man  who  is  seasick.  So,  unless  there  was  an 
important  reason  why  we  should  reach  port, 
we  always  made  a  head- wind  of  anything 
stronger  than  a  light  breeze,  and  followed 
the  weather  round  the  compass  until  it  was 
fair  for  our  destination. 

As  soon  as  we  left  Mentone  Mr.  Pulitzer 
began  the  process  of  education  which  was 
designed  to  fit  me  for  his  service. 

"When  you  were  in  New  York,"  he  asked, 
"what  papers  did  you  read?" 

"The  Sun  and  TJie  Times  in  the  morning 
and  The  Evening  Sun  and  The  Evening 
Post  at  night,"  I  replied. 

"My  God !   Didn't  you  read  The  World?" 
"Notliing  but  the  editorial  page." 
"Why  not?    What's  the  matter  with  it?" 
I  exj)lained  that  I  was  not  interested  in 
crime  and  disaster,  to  which  The  World  de- 
voted so  much  space,  that  I  wanted  more 
foreign  news  than  The  World  found  room 
for,  and  that  I  was  offended  by  the  big 


106         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

headlines,  which  compelled  me  to  know 
things  I  didn't  want  to  know. 

"Go  on,"  he  said;  "your  views  are  not  of 
any  importance,  but  they're  entertaining." 

"Well,"  I  continued,  "I  think  The  World 
was  excellently  described  a  few  years  ago 
in  Life.  There  was  a  poem  entitled,  'New 
York  Newspaper  Directory,  Revised,'  in 
which  a  verse  was  devoted  to  each  of  the  big 
New  York  papers.  I  believe  I  can  remem- 
ber the  one  about  The  World,  if  you  care 
to  hear  it,  for  I  cut  the  poem  out  and  have 
kept  it  among  my  clippings." 

"Certainly,  go  ahead." 

I  recited: 

"A  dual  personality  is  this, 
Part  yellow  dog,  part  patriot  and  sage ; 
When  't  comes  to  facts  the  rule  is  hit  or  miss. 
While  none  can  beat  its  editorial  page. 
Wise  counsel  here,  wild  yarns  the  other  side, 
Page  six  its  Jckyll  and  page  one  its  Hyde; 
At  the  same  time  conservative  and  rash. 
The  World  supplies  us  good  advice  and  trash." 

"That's  clever,"  said  Mr.  Pulitzer,  "but 
it's  absolute  nonsense,  except  about  the  edi- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  107 

torial  page.  Have  you  got  the  clipping 
with  you?  I  would  like  to  hear  what  that 
smart  young  man  has  got  to  say  about  the 
other  papers." 

I  went  to  my  cabin,  got  the  poem,  and 
read  the  whole  of  it  to  him — witty  charac- 
terizations of  The  Evening  Post,  The  Sun, 
The  Journal,  The  Tribune,  The  Times  and 
The  Herald,  As  soon  as  I  had  finished 
reading,  Mr.  Pulitzer  said: 

"The  man  who  wrote  those  verses  had  his 
prejudices,  but  he  was  clever.  I'm  glad  you 
read  them  to  me;  always  read  me  anything 
of  that  kind,  anything  that  is  bright  and 
satirical.  Now,  I'm  going  to  give  you  a 
lecture  about  newspapers,  because  I  want 
you  to  understand  my  point  of  view.  It 
does  not  matter  whether  you  agree  with  it 
or  not,  but  you  have  got  to  understand  it  if 
you  are  going  to  be  of  any  use  to  me.  But 
before  I  begin,  you  tell  me  what  your 
ideas  are  about  running  a  newspaper  for 
American  readers." 

I  pleaded  that  I  had  never  given  the  mat- 
ter much  thought,  and  that  I  had  little  to 


108         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

guide  me,  except  my  own  preferences  and 
the  memory  of  an  occasional  discussion  here 
and  there  at  a  club  or  in  the  smoking  room 
of  a  Pullman.  He  insisted,  however,  and 
so  I  launched  forth  upon  a  discourse  in  re- 
gard to  the  functions,  duties  and  responsi- 
bilities of  an  American  newspaper,  as  I  im- 
agined they  would  appear  to  the  average 
American  reader. 

The  cliief  duty  of  a  managing  editor,  I 
said,  w^as  to  give  his  readers  an  interesting 
paper,  and  as  an  angler  baits  his  hook,  not 
with  what  he  likes,  but  with  what  the  fish 
hke,  so  the  style  of  the  newspaper  should 
be  adjusted  to  what  the  managing  editor 
judged  to  be  the  public  appetite. 

A  sub-stratum  of  truth  should  run 
through  the  news  columns ;  but  since  a  mil- 
lion-dollar fire  is  more  exciting  than  a  half- 
milhon-doUar  fire,  since  a  thousand  deaths 
in  an  earthquake  are  more  exciting  than  a 
hundi'cd,  no  nice  scrupulosity  need  be  ob- 
served in  checking  the  insurance  inspector's 
figures  or  in  counting  the  dead.  What  the 
pubhc  wanted  was  a  good  "stor^^"  and  pro- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  109 

vided  it  got  that  there  would  be  httle  dispo- 
sition in  any  quarter  to  censure  an  arithmet- 
ical generosity  which  had  been  invoked  in  the 
service  of  the  public's  well-known  demands. 

So  far  as  politics  were  concerned,  it 
seemed  to  me  that  any  newspaper  could  af- 
ford the  strongest  support  to  its  views  while 
printing  the  truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth, 
if  it  exercised  some  discretion  as  to  print- 
ing the  whole  truth.  The  editorial,  I 
added,  might  be  regarded  as  a  habit  rather 
than  as  a  guiding  force.  People  no  longer 
looked  to  the  editorial  columns  for  the  for- 
mation of  their  opinions.  They  formed 
their  judgment  from  a  large  stock  of  facts, 
near- facts  and  nowhere  near- facts,  and  then 
bought  a  paper  for  the  purpose  of  comfort- 
able reassurance.  I  had  no  doubt  that  a 
newspaper  run  to  suit  my  own  taste — a  com- 
bination of  TJie  World's  editorial  page  with 
The  Evening  Post's  news  and  make-up — 
would  lack  the  influence  with  which  circula- 
tion alone  can  endow  a  paper,  and  would  end 
in  a  bankruptcy  highly  creditable  to  its 
stockholders. 


110         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

This  somewhat  cynical  outburst  brought 
down  upon  me  an  overwhelming  torrent  of 
protest  from  Mr.  Pulitzer. 

"My  God!"  he  cried,  "I  would  not  have 
beheved  it  possible  that  any  one  could  show 
such  a  complete  ignorance  of  American 
character,  of  the  high  sense  of  duty  wliich 
in  the  main  animates  American  joumahsm, 
of  the  foundations  of  integrity  on  which  al- 
most every  successful  paper  in  the  United 
States  has  been  founded.  You  do  not  know 
what  it  costs  me  to  try  and  keep  Tlie  World 
up  to  a  high  standard  of  accuracy — the 
money,  the  time,  the  thought,  the  praise,  the 
blame,  the  constant  watchfulness. 

"I  do  not  say  that  The  World  never  makes 
a  mistake  in  its  news  column ;  I  wish  I  could 
say  it.  What  I  say  is  that  there  are  not  half 
a  dozen  papers  in  the  United  States  which 
tamper  with  the  news,  which  publish  what 
they  know  to  be  false.  But  if  I  thought 
that  I  had  done  no  better  than  that  I  would 
be  ashamed  to  own  a  paper.  It  is  not 
enough  to  refrain  from  publishing  fake 
news,  it  is  not  enough  to  take  ordinary  care 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  111 

to  avoid  the  mistakes  which  arise  from  the 
ignorance,  the  carelessness,  the  stupidity  of 
one  or  more  of  the  many  men  who  handle 
the  news  before  it  gets  into  print ;  you  have 
got  to  do  much  more  than  that;  you  have 
got  to  make  every  one  connected  with  the 
paper — your  editors,  your  reporters,  your 
correspondents,  j^our  rewrite  men,  your 
proof-readers — believe  that  accuracy  is  to  a 
newspaper  what  virtue  is  to  a  woman. 

"When  you  go  to  New  York  ask  any  of 
the  men  in  the  dome  to  show  you  my  instruc- 
tions to  them,  my  letters  written  from  day 
to  day,  my  cables ;  and  you  will  see  that  ac- 
curacy, accuracy,  accuracy,  is  the  first,  the 
most  urgent,  the  most  constant  demand  I 
have  made  on  them. 

"I  do  not  say  that  The  World  is  the  only 
paper  which  takes  extraordinary  pains  to 
be  accurate;  on  the  contrary,  I  think  that 
almost  every  paper  in  America  tries  to  be 
accurate.  I  will  go  further  than  that. 
There  is  not  a  paper  of  any  importance  pub- 
lished in  French,  German  or  Enghsh, 
whether  it  is  printed  in  Europe  or  in  Amer- 


112  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

ica,  which  I  have  not  studied  for  weeks  or 
months,  and  some  of  them  I  have  read 
steadily  for  a  quarter  of  a  century;  and  I 
tell  you  this,  Mr.  Ireland,  after  years  of 
experience,  after  having  comparisons  made 
by  the  hundred,  from  time  to  time,  of  dif- 
ferent versions  of  the  same  event,  that  the 
press  of  America  as  a  whole  has  a  higher 
standard  of  accuracy  than  the  European 
press  as  a  whole.  I  will  go  further  than 
that.  I  will  say  that  line  for  line  the  Ameri- 
can newspapers  actually  attain  a  higher 
standard  of  news  accuracy  than  the  Euro- 
pean newspapers ;  and  I  will  go  further  than 
that  and  say  that  although  there  are  in 
Europe  a  few  newspapers,  and  they  are 
chiefly  English,  which  are  as  accurate  as  the 
best  newspapers  in  America,  there  are  no 
newspapers  in  America  which  are  so  ha- 
bitually, so  criminally  stuffed  with  fake 
news  as  the  worst  of  the  European  papers." 
Mr.  Pulitzer  paused  and  asked  me  if 
there  was  a  glass  of  water  on  the  table — we 
WTre  seated  in  his  libraiy — and  after  I  had 
handed  it  to  him  and  he  had  drained  it  nearly 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  113 

to  the  bottom  at  one  gulp,  he  resumed  his 
lecture.  I  give  it  in  considerable  detail,  be- 
cause it  was  the  longest  speech  he  ever  ad- 
dressed to  me,  because  he  subsequently  made 
me  write  it  out  from  memory  and  then  read 
it  to  him,  and  because  it  was  one  of  the  few 
occasions  during  my  intercourse  with  him  on 
which  I  w^as  persuaded  beyond  a  doubt  that 
he  spoke  with  perfect  frankness,  without 
allowing  his  words  to  be  influenced  by  any 
outside  considerations. 

"As  a  matter  of  fact,"  Ke  continued,  "the 
criticisms  you  hear  about  tKe  American  press 
are  founded  on  a  dislike  for  our  headlines 
and  for  the  prominence  we  give  to  crime,  to 
corruption  in  office,  and  to  sensational  topics 
generally;  the  charge  of  inaccuracy  is  just 
thrown  in  to  make  it  look  worse.  I  do  not 
believe  that  one  person  in  a  thousand  who 
attacks  the  American  press  for  being  inac- 
curate has  ever  taken  the  trouble  to  investi- 
gate the  facts. 

"Now  about  this  matter  of  sensational- 
ism :  a  newspaper  should  be  scrupulously  ac- 
curate, it  should  be  clean,  it  should  avoid 


114         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

everyihing  salacious  or  suggestive,  every- 
thing that  could  offend  good  taste  or  lower 
the  moral  tone  of  its  readers;  but  within 
these  limits  it  is  the  duty  of  a  newspaper  to 
print  the  news.  When  I  speak  of  good 
taste  and  of  good  moral  tone  I  do  not  mean 
the  kind  of  good  taste  which  is  offended  by 
every  reference  to  the  unpleasant  things  of 
life,  I  do  not  mean  the  kind  of  morality 
which  refuses  to  recognize  the  existence  of 
immorality — that  type  of  moral  hypocrite 
has  done  more  to  check  the  moral  progress 
of  humanity  than  all  the  immoral  people  put 
together — what  I  mean  is  the  kind  of  good 
taste  which  demands  that  frankness  should 
be  linked  with  decencj^  the  kind  of  moral 
tone  which  is  braced  and  not  relaxed  when 
it  is  brought  face  to  face  with  vice. 

"Some  people  try  and  make  you  believe 
that  a  newspaper  should  not  devote  its  space 
to  long  and  dramatic  accounts  of  murders, 
railroad  wrecks,  fires,  lynchings,  political 
corruption,  embezzlements,  frauds,  graft, 
divorces,  what  you  will.  I  tell  you  they  are 
wrong,  and  I  believe  that  if  they  thought 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  115 

the  thing  out  they  would  see  that  they  are 
wrong, 

"We  are  a  democracy,  and  there  is  only 
one  way  to  get  a  democracy  on  its  feet  in 
the  matter  of  its  individual,  its  social,  its 
municipal,  its  State,  its  National  conduct, 
and  that  is  by  keeping  the  public  informed 
about  what  is  going  on.  There  is  not  a 
crime,  there  is  not  a  dodge,  there  is  not  a 
trick,  there  is  not  a  swindle,  there  is  not  a 
vice  which  does  not  live  by  secrecy.  Get 
these  things  out  in  the  open,  describe  them, 
attack  them,  ridicule  them  in  the  press,  and 
sooner  or  later  public  opinion  will  sweep 
them  away, 

"Publicity  may  not  be  the  only  thing  that 
is  needed,  but  it  is  the  one  thing  without 
which  all  other  agencies  will  fail.  If  a  news- 
paper is  to  be  of  real  service  to  the  public 
it  must  have  a  big  circulation,  first  because 
its  news  and  its  comment  must  reach  the 
largest  possible  number  of  people,  second, 
because  circulation  means  advertising,  and 
advertising  means  money,  and  money  means 
independence.    If  I  caught  any  man  on  The 


116         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

World  suppressing"  news  because  one  of  our 
advertisers  objected  to  having  it  printed  I 
would  dismiss  him  immediately;  I  wouldn't 
care  who  he  was. 

"What  a  newspaper  needs  in  its  news,  in 
its  headlines,  and  on  its  editorial  page  is 
terseness,  humor,  descriptive  power,  satire, 
originality,  good  literary  style,  clever  con- 
densation, and  accuracy,  accuracy,  accu- 
racy!'* 

Mr.  Pulitzer  made  this  confession  of  faith 
with  the  warmth  generated  by  an  unshaka- 
ble faith.  He  spoke,  as  he  always  spoke 
when  he  was  excited,  with  vigor,  emphasis 
and  ample  gesture.  When  he  came  to  an 
end  and  asked  for  another  glass  of  water  I 
found  notliing  to  say.  It  would  have  been 
as  impertinent  of  me  to  agree  with  him  as  to 
differ  from  him. 

After  all,  I  had  to  remember  that  he  had 
taken  over  The  World  when  its  circulation 
was  less  than  15,000  copies  a  day;  that  he 
had  been  for  thirty  years  and  still  was  its 
dominating  spirit  and  the  final  authority  on 
every  matter  concerning  its  policy,  its  style. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER         117 

and  its  contents ;  that  he  had  seen  its  morn- 
ing circulation  go  up  to  well  over  350,000 
copies  a  day ;  that  at  times  he  had  taken  his 
stand  holdly  against  popular  clamor,  as 
when  he  kept  up  for  months  a  bitter  attack 
against  the  American  action  in  the  Venezue- 
lan boundary  dispute,  and  at  times  had  in- 
curred the  hostility  of  powerful  moneyed  in- 
terests, as  when  he  forced  the  Cleveland  ad- 
ministration to  sell  to  the  public  on  com- 
petitive bids  a  fifty-million-dollar  bond  is- 
sue which  it  had  arranged  to  sell  privately 
to  a  great  banking  house  at  much  less  than 
its  market  value. 

Before  leaving  the  subject  of  newspapers 
I  may  describe  the  method  by  which  Mr. 
Pulitzer  kej)t  in  touch  with  the  news  and  put 
himself  in  the  position  to  maintain  a  critical 
supervision  over  The  World. 

An  elaborate  organization  was  employed 
for  this  purpose.  I  will  explain  it  as  it 
worked  when  we  were  on  the  yacht,  but  the 
system  was  maintained  at  all  times,  whether 
we  were  cruising,  or  were  at  Cap  Martin,  at 
Bar  Harbor,  at  Wiesbaden,  or  elsewhere. 


118         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

merely  a  few  minor  details  being  changed 
to  meet  local  conditions. 

In  the  Pulitzer  Building,  Park  Row,  New 
York,  there  were  collected  each  day  several 
copies  of  each  of  the  morning  papers,  in- 
cluding The  World,  and  some  of  the  even- 
ing papers.  These  were  mailed  daily  to  Mr. 
Pulitzer  according  to  cabled  instructions  as 
to  our  whereabouts.  In  addition  to  this  a 
gentleman  connected  with  The  World,  who 
had  long  experience  of  Mr.  Pulitzer's  re- 
quirements, cut  from  all  the  New  York 
papers  and  from  a  number  of  other  papers 
from  every  part  of  the  United  States  every 
article  that  he  considered  Mr.  PuHtzer  ought 
to  see,  whether  because  of  its  subject,  its 
tenor,  or  its  style.  These  cHppings  were 
mailed  by  the  hundred  on  almost  every  fast 
steamer  sailing  for  Europe.  In  order  that 
there  might  be  the  greatest  economy  of  time 
in  reading  them,  the  essential  matter  in  each 
clipping  was  marked. 

So  far  as  The  World  was  concerned  a 
copy  of  each  issue  was  sent,  with  the  names 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  119 

^   .  . 

of  the  ^vriters  written  across  each  editorial, 

big  news  story,  or  special  article. 

As  we  went  from  port  to  port  we  got  the 
principal  French,  German,  Austrian  and 
Italian  papers,  and  The  World  bureau  in 
London  kept  us  supplied  with  the  English 
dailies  and  weeklies. 

Whenever  we  picked  up  a  batch  of  Amer- 
ican papers,  each  of  the  secretaries  got  a  set 
and  immediately  began  to  read  it.  My  own 
method  of  reading  was  adopted  after  much 
advice  from  Mr.  Pulitzer  and  after  consul- 
tation with  the  more  experienced  members 
of  the  staff,  and  I  do  not  suppose  it  dif- 
fered materially  from  that  followed  by  the 
others. 

I  read  The  World  first,  going  over  the 
"big"  stories  carefully  and  with  enough  con- 
centration to  give  me  a  very  fair  idea  of  the 
facts.  Then  I  read  the  articles  in  the  other 
papers  covering  the  same  ground,  noting 
any  important  differences  in  the  various  ac- 
counts. This  task  resolved  itself  in  practice 
into  mastering  in  considerable  detail  about 
half  a  dozen  articles — a  political  situation,  a 


120         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

murder,  a  railroad  wreck,  a  fire,  a  strike,  an 
important  address  by  a  college  president,  for 
example — and  getting  a  clear  impression  of 
the  treatment  of  each  item  in  each  paper. 

With  this  done,  and  with  a  few  notes 
scribbled  on  a  card  to  help  my  memory,  I 
turned  to  the  editorial  pages,  reading  each 
editorial  with  the  closest  attention,  and  mak- 
ing more  notes. 

The  final  reading  of  the  news  served  to 
give  me  from  ten  to  twenty  small  topics  of 
what  Mr.  Pulitzer  called  "hviman  interest," 
to  be  used  as  subjects  of  conversation  as  oc- 
casion demanded.  As  a  rule,  I  cut  these 
items  out  of  the  paper  and  put  them  in  the 
left-hand  pocket  of  my  coat,  for  when  we 
walked  together  J.  P.  always  took  my  right 
arm,  and  my  left  hand  was  therefore  free  to 
dip  into  my  reservoir  of  cuttings  whenever 
conversation  flagged  and  I  needed  a  new 
subject. 

The  cuttings  covered  eveiy  imaginable 
topic — small  cases  in  the  magistrates'  courts, 
eccentric  entertainments  at  Newport,  the 
deaths  of  centenarians,  dinners  to  visiting 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  121 

authors  in  Xew  York,  accounts  of  perform- 
ing animals,  infant  prodigies,  new  inven- 
tions, additions  to  the  MetropoHtan  Mu- 
seum, announcements  of  new  plays,  anec- 
dotes about  prominent  men  and  women,  in- 
stances of  foolish  extravagance  among  the 
rich,  and  so  on. 

Sometliing  of  the  kind  was  done  by  each 
of  us,  so  that  when  Mr.  Pulitzer  appeared 
on  deck  after  breakfast  we  all  had  something 
ready  for  liim.  The  first  man  called  usually 
had  the  easiest  time,  for  JNIr.  Pulitzer's 
mind  was  fresh  and  keen  for  ncAvs  after  a 
night's  rest.  The  men  who  went  to  him  later 
in  the  morning  suffered  from  two  disad- 
vantages, one  that  they  did  not  know  what 
news  or  how  much  of  it  J.  P.  had  already 
received,  the  other  that  as  the  day  advanced 
INIr.  Pulitzer  often  grew  tired,  and  his  at- 
tention then  became  difficult  to  hold. 

I  remember  that  on  one  occasion  when  he 
had  complained  of  feeling  utterly  tired  out 
mentally  I  asked  him  if  he  would  like  me 
to  stop  talking.  "No,  no,"  he  replied  at 
once;   "never  stop   talking  or  reading,   I 


122  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

must  have  something  to  occupy  my  mind  all 
the  time,  however  exhausted  I  am." 

Tliis  peculiarity  of  being  unable  to  get 
any  repose  by  the  road  of  silent  abstraction 
must  have  been  a  source  of  acute  suffering 
to  him.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  more  ter- 
rible condition  of  mind  than  that  in  which 
the  constant  flogging  of  a  tired  brain  is  the 
only  anodyne  for  its  morbid  irritability. 

My  own  experience  of  a  morning  on  the 
yacht,  when  Mr.  Pulitzer's  nerves  had  been 
soothed  by  a  good  night's  sleep,  was  that  he 
walked  up  and  down  the  long  promenade 
deck  and  got  from  me  a  brief  summary  of 
the  news. 

From  time  to  time  he  pulled  out  his  watch 
and,  holding  it  toward  me,  asked  what 
o'clock  it  was.  He  was  always  most  particu- 
lar to  know  exactly  how  long  he  had  walked. 
We  had  arguments  on  many  occasions  as  to 
the  exact  moment  at  which  we  had  com- 
menced our  promenade,  and  we  would  go 
carefully  over  the  facts — Mr.  Craven  had 
been  walking  with  him  from  9.30  to  10.05, 
then  Dunningham  had  been  in  the  library 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  123 

with  him  for  fifteen  minutes,  then  Mr. 
Thwaites  had  walked  with  him  for  ten  min- 
utes, taking  notes  for  a  letter  to  be  written 
to  the  managing  editor  of  The  World; 
well,  that  made  it  10.30  when  I  joined  him; 
but  fifteen  minutes  had  to  be  taken  out  of 
the  hour  for  the  time  he'd  spent  in  the  li- 
brary, that  made  three-quarters  of  an  hour 
he'd  been  actually  walking,  well,  we'd  walk 
for  another  fifteen  minutes  and  round  out 
the  hour. 

Often  when  the  appointed  moment  came 
to  stop  walking  Mr.  Pulitzer  felt  able  to  go 
on,  and  he  would  then  either  say  frankly, 
"Let's  have  fifteen  minutes  more^"  or 
he  would  achieve  the  same  end  by  reopening 
the  discussion  as  to  just  how  long  he  had 
walked,  and  keep  on  walking  until  he  began 
to  feel  tired,  when  he  would  say:  "I  dare  say 
you  are  quite  right,  well,  now  we  will  sit 
down  and  go  over  the  papers." 

The  question  of  where  Mr.  Pulitzer  was 
to  sit  on  deck  was  not  a  simple  one  to  de- 
cide. He  always  wanted  as  much  air  as  he 
could  get;  but  as  he  suffered  a  good  deal  of 


124  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

pain  in  his  right  eye,  the  one  which  had  been 
operated  on,  and  as  this  was  either  started 
or  made  worse  by  exjjosure  to  wind,  a  spot 
had  to  be  found  which  had  just  the  right 
amount  of  air  current.  Five  minutes  might 
show,  however,  that  there  was  a  Httle  too 
much  wind,  when  we  would  move  to  a  more 
sheltered  spot,  or  he  might  think  we'd  been 
too  cautious  and  that  he  could  sit  in  a  breez- 
ier spot,  or,  after  we  had  found  the  ideal 
place,  the  wind  might  change,  and  then  we 
had  to  move  again. 

Settled  in  a  large  cane  armchair  vdtb  a 
leather  seat,  a  heavy  rug  over  his  knees  if  the 
weather  was  at  all  chilly,  Mr.  Pulitzer  took 
up  the  serious  consideration  of  the  news 
wliich  had  been  hghtly  skimmed  over  during 
his  walk. 

An  item  was  selected,  and  the  account  in 
The  World  was  read  aloud.  Then  followed 
the  discussion  of  it  from  the  standpoint  of 
its  presentation  in  the  various  papers.  On 
Avhat  page  was  it  printed  in  The  World,  in 
what  column,  how  much  space  did  it  fill,  how 
much  was  devoted  to  headhnes,  what  was  the 


JOSEPH    PULITZER 

LISTENING    TO    THE   MORNING's    NEWS 

ON    THE  "  LIBERTY  " 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  125 

size  of  tlie  type,  was  the  type  varied  in  parts 
to  give  emphasis  to  the  more  striking  fea- 
tures of  the  story,  what  were  the  cross-heads 
in  the  body  of  the  article,  were  any  boxes 
used,  if  so,  what  was  put  in  them,  what 
about  the  illustrations  ?  And  so  on  for  each 
important  item  in  each  paper. 

One  of  the  by-products  of  this  reading  of 
the  j)apers  was  a  stream  of  cables,  letters  and 
memoranda  to  various  members  of  The 
World  staff  in  New  York.  None  of  these 
were  ever  sent  through  me,  but  it  was  a  com- 
mon thing  for  J.  P.  to  say:  "Have  you  got 
your  v^Titing  pad  with  you?  Just  make  a 
note:  Indianapolis  story  excellent,  insuf- 
ficient details  lynching,  who  wrote  City  Hall 
story?  and  give  it  to  Thwaites  and  teU  him 
to  remind  me  of  it  this  afternoon." 

INIr.  Pulitzer  would  take  the  matter  up 
with  Thwaites,  and  would  send  such  praise, 
blame,  reward,  criticism,  or  suggestion  as 
the  occasion  demanded. 

From  time  to  time  I  was  called  upon  to 
make  a  report  on  the  day's  papers,  a  task 
which  usually  fell  to  some  more  experienced 


126  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

member  of  the  staff.  My  reports  always 
covered  the  Sunday  issues.  They  included 
an  analysis  of  The  Sun,  The  Herald,  The 
American,  The  Times,  The  Tribune  and 
The  World,  showing  the  number  of  columns 
of  advertising,  of  news,  and  of  special  arti- 
cles, a  classification  of  the  telegrams  accord- 
ing to  geographical  distribution — how  much 
from  France,  from  Germany,  from  Eng- 
land, from  the  Western  States,  from  the 
Southern  States,  and  so  on;  a  classification 
of  the  special  articles  on  the  basis  of  their 
topics — ^medicine,  sport,  fashions,  humor,  ad- 
venture, children's  interests,  women's  inter- 
ests. 

This  was  by  no  means  the  only  check 
which  Mr.  Pulitzer  kept  upon  The  World 
and  its  contemporaries.  He  received  regu- 
larly from  New  York  a  statistical  return 
showing,  for  The  World  and  its  two  princi- 
pal competitors,  the  monthly  and  yearly  fig- 
ures for  circulation  and  advertising ;  and  the 
advertising  return  showed  not  only  the 
amount  of  space  occupied  by  advertising  in 
each  paper,  but  also  the  number  of  adver- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER         127 

tisements  each  month  under  various  heads, 
such  as  display  advertising,  want  ads.,  real 
estate,  dry  goods,  amusements,  hotels,  trans- 
portation, to  let  ads.,  summer  resorts,  and 
whatever  other  classes  of  advertising  might 
appear. 

Whatever  Mr.  Pulitzer  wished  to  do  in 
the  way  of  business,  whether  it  concerned  the 
direction  of  the  policy  of  The  World,  or  the 
dictating  of  an  editorial,  or  the  handling  of 
correspondence,  was  almost  always  done  in 
the  morning,  and  by  lunch  time  he  was  ready 
to  turn  his  attention  to  something  light  or 
amusing,  or  to  serious  subjects  not  con- 
nected with  current  events. 

Mr.  Pulitzer  generally  lunched  and  dined 
with  the  staff  in  the  dining  saloon,  unless  he 
felt  more  than  usually  ill  or  nervous,  when 
he  had  his  meals  served  in  the  library,  one 
or  at  most  two  of  us  keeping  him  company. 

When  he  sat  with  us  he  occupied  the  head 
of  the  table.  At  his  side  stood  the  butler, 
who  never  attended  to  any  one  but  his  mas- 
ter. A  stranger  at  the  table,  if  he  were  not 
actually  sitting  next  to  J.  P.,  might  very 


128  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

well  have  failed  to  notice  that  his  host  was 
blind,  so  far  as  any  indication  of  blindness 
was  afforded  by  the  way  he  ate.  His  food 
was,  of  course,  cut  up  at  a  side  table,  but  it 
was  placed  before  him  on  an  ordinary  plate, 
without  any  raised  edge  or  other  device  to 
save  it  from  being  pushed  on  to  the  table- 
cloth. 

As  soon  as  he  was  seated  J.  P.  put  his 
fingers  lightly  on  the  table  in  front  of  him 
and  fixed  the  exact  position  of  his  plate, 
fork,  spoon,  water  glass  and  wine  glass. 
While  he  was  doing  this  he  generally  spoke 
a  few  words  to  one  or  another  of  us,  and  as 
he  always  turned  his  face  in  the  direction  of 
the  person  he  was  addressing,  the  delicate 
movements  of  his  hands,  even  if  they  were 
observed,  were  only  those  of  a  man  with  his 
sight  under  similar  circumstances. 

Sitting  next  to  him,  however,  his  bhnd- 
ness  soon  became  apparent.  As  he  began  to 
eat  he  simply  impaled  each  portion  of  food 
on  his  fork,  but  after  he  had  got  halfway 
through  a  course  and  the  remaining  morsels 
were  scattered  here  and  there  on  his  plate, 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  129 

he  explored  the  surface  with  the  utmost  nice- 
ness  of  touch  until  he  felt  a  slight  resistance. 
He  had  then  located  a  morsel,  but  in  order 
that  he  might  avoid  an  accident  in  transfer- 
ring it  to  his  mouth  he  felt  the  object  care- 
fully all  over  with  almost  imperceptible 
touches  of  his  fork,  and,  having  found  the 
tliickest  or  firmest  part  of  it  secured  it 
safely. 

At  times,  if  he  became  particularly  inter- 
ested in  the  conversation,  he  put  his  fork 
down,  and  when  he  picked  it  up  again  he  was 
in  difficulties  for  a  moment  or  two,  having 
lost  track  of  the  food  remaining  on  his  plate. 
On  these  occasions  the  ever-watchful  butler 
would  either  place  the  food  with  a  fork  in 
the  track  of  J.  P.'s  systematic  exploration, 
or  guide  Mr.  Pulitzer's  hand  to  the  right 
spot. 

Like  many  people  in  broken  health  Mr. 
Pulitzer  had  a  very  variable  appetite.  Some- 
times nothing  could  tempt  his  palate,  some- 
times he  ate  voraciously ;  but  at  all  times  the 
greatest  care  had  to  be  exercised  in  regard 
to  his  diet.     Not  only  did  he  suffer  con- 


130  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

stantly  from  acute  dyspepsia,  but  also  from 
diabetes,  which  varied  in  sympathy  with  his 
general  state  of  health. 

He  took  very  little  alcohol,  and  that  only 
in  the  form  of  light  wines,  such  as  claret  or 
hock,  seldom  more  than  a  single  small  glass 
at  lunch  and  at  dinner.  Whenever  he  found 
a  vintage  which  specially  appealed  to  him 
he  would  tell  the  butler  to  send  a  case  or 
two  to  some  old  friend  in  America,  to  some 
member  of  his  family  or  to  one  of  the  staff 
of  The  World. 

After  lunch  Mr.  Puhtzer  always  retired 
to  his  cabin  for  a  siesta.  I  use  the  word 
siesta,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  quite  in- 
adequate to  describe  the  peculiar  function 
for  which  I  have  chosen  it  as  a  label.  What 
took  place  on  these  occasions  was  this :  Mr. 
Pulitzer  lay  down  on  his  bed,  sometimes  in 
pyjamas,  but  more  often  with  only  his  coat 
and  boots  removed,  and  one  of  the  secre- 
taries, usually  the  German  secretary,  sat 
down  in  an  armchair  at  the  bedside  with  a 
pile  of  books  at  his  elbow. 

At  a  word  from  Mr.  Pulitzer  the  secre- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  131 

taiy  began  to  read  in  a  clear,  incisive  voice 
some  historical  work,  novel  or  play.  After 
a  few  minutes  Mr.  Pulitzer  would  say 
"Softly,"  and  the  secretary's  voice  was  low- 
ered until,  though  it  was  still  audible,  it  as- 
sumed a  monotonous  and  soothing  quality. 
After  a  while  the  order  came,  "Quite  softly." 
At  this  point  the  reader  ceased  to  form  his 
words  and  commenced  to  murmur  indis- 
tinctly, giving  an  effect  such  as  might  be 
produced  by  a  person  reading  aloud  in  an 
adjoining  room,  but  with  the  connecting 
door  closed. 

If,  after  ten  minutes  of  this  murmuring, 
J.  P.  remained  motionless  it  was  to  be  as- 
sumed that  he  was  asleep;  and  the  secre- 
tary's duty  was  to  go  on  murmuring  until 
Mr.  Pulitzer  awoke  and  told  him  to  stop  or 
to  commence  actual  reading  again.  This 
murmuring  might  last  for  two  hoiu*s,  and 
it  was  a  very  difficult  art  to  acquire,  for  at 
the  slightest  change  in  the  pitch  of  the  voice, 
at  a  sneeze,  or  a  cough,  Mr.  Puhtzer  would 
wake  with  a  start,  and  an  unpleasant  quar- 
ter of  an  hour  followed. 


132         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

This  murmuring  was  not,  however,  with- 
out its  consolations  to  the  murmurer,  for  as 
soon  as  the  actual  reading  stopped  he  could 
take  up  a  novel  or  magazine  and,  leaving  his 
vocal  organs  to  carry  on  the  work,  concen- 
trate his  mind  upon  the  preparation  of  ma- 
terial against  some  future  session. 

The  siesta  over,  the  afternoon  was  taken 
up  with  much  the  same  kind  of  work  as  had 
filled  the  morning.  By  six  o'clock  Mr. 
Pulitzer  was  ready  to  sit  in  the  hbrary  for 
an  hour  before  he  dressed  for  dinner.  This 
time  was  generally  devoted  to  novels,  plays 
and  light  literature  of  various  kinds.  J.  P. 
often  assured  me  that  no  man  had  ever  been 
able  to  read  a  novel  or  a  play  to  him  satisfac- 
torily without  having  first  gone  over  it  care- 
fully at  least  twice;  and  on  more  than  one 
occasion  I  was  furnished  with  veiy  good  evi- 
dence that  even  this  double  preparation  was 
not  always  a  guarantee  of  success. 

There  appeared  to  be  two  ways  of  getting 
Mr.  Pulitzer  interested  in  a  novel  or  play. 
One,  and  this,  I  believe,  was  the  most  suc- 
cessful, was  to  draw  a  striking  picture  of 


JOSEPH  PULITZER         133 

the  scene  where  the  climax  is  reached — the 
wife  crouching  in  the  corner,  the  husband 
revolver  in  hand,  the  Tertium  Quid  calmly 
offering  to  read  the  documents  which  prove 
that  he  and  not  the  gentleman  with  the  re- 
volver is  really  the  husband  of  the  lady — and 
then  to  go  back  to  the  beginning  and  explain 
how  it  all  came  about. 

The  other  method  was  to  set  forth  the  ap- 
pearance and  disposition  of  each  of  the 
characters  in  the  story,  so  that  they  assumed 
reality  in  Mr.  Pulitzer's  mind,  then  to  con- 
dense the  narrative  up  to  about  page  two 
hundred  and  sixty,  and  then  begin  to  read 
from  the  book.  If  in  the  course  of  the  next 
three  minutes  you  were  not  asked  in  a  tone 
of  utter  weariness,  "My  God!  Is  there 
much  more  of  this?"  there  was  a  reasonable 
chance  that  you  might  be  allowed  to  read 
from  the  print  a  fifth  or  possibly  a  fourth 
of  what  you  had  not  summarized. 

Dinner  on  the  yacht  passed  in  much  the 
same  way  as  lunch,  except  that  serious  sub- 
jects and  especially  politics  were  taboo. 

The  meal  hours  were  really  the  most  try- 


134  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

ing  experiences  of  the  day.  Each  of  us  went 
to  the  table  with  several  topics  of  conversa- 
tion carefully  prepared,  with  our  pockets 
full  of  newspaper  cuttings,  notes  and  even 
small  reference  books  for  dates  and  biog- 
raphies. 

But  there  was  seldom  any  conversation  in 
the  proper  sense;  that  is  to  say,  we  were 
hardly  ever  able  to  start  a  subject  going  and 
pass  it  from  one  to  the  other  with  a  running 
comment  or  amplification,  partly  because 
any  expression  of  opinion,  except  when  he, 
J.  P.,  asked  for  it,  usually  bored  him  to  ex- 
tinction, and  partly  because  the  first  state- 
ment of  any  striking  fact  generally  inspired 
Mr.  Pulitzer  to  undertake  a  searching  cross- 
examination  of  the  speaker  into  every  detail 
of  the  matter  brought  forward,  and  in  re- 
gard to  everj'^  ramification  of  the  subject. 

I  may  relate  an  amusing  instance  of  tliis : 
A  gentleman  who  had  been  on  the  staff,  but 
had  been  absent  through  illness,  joined  us  at 
JMentone  for  a  cruise  in  the  Eastern  Medi- 
terranean. At  dinner  the  first  night  out  he 
incautiously  mentioned  that  during  the  two 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  135 

months  of  his  convalescence  he  had  taken  the 
opportunity  of  reading  the  whole  of  Shake- 
speare's plays. 

Too  late  he  realized  his  mistake.  Mr. 
Piihtzer  took  the  matter  up,  and  for  the  next 
horn-  and  a  half  we  hstened  to  the  unfor- 
tunate ex-invalid  while  he  gave  a  list  of  the 
principal  characters  in  each  of  the  historical 
plays,  in  each  of  the  tragedies,  and  in  each 
of  the  comedies,  followed  by  an  outline  of 
each  plot,  a  description  of  a  scene  here  and 
there,  and  an  occasional  quotation  from  the 
text. 

At  the  end  of  this  heroic  exploit,  which 
was  helped  out  now  and  then  by  a  note  from 
one  of  the  rest  of  us,  scribbled  hastily  on  a 
card  and  handed  silently  to  the  victim,  Mr. 
Pulitzer  merely  said,  "Well,  go  on,  go  on, 
didn't  you  read  the  sonnets?"  But  this  was 
too  much  for  our  gravity,  and  in  a  ripple 
of  laughter  the  sitting  was  brought  to  a 
close. 

The  trouble  with  the  meals,  however,  was 
not  only  that  we  were  all  kept  at  a  very  high 
strain  of  alertness  and  attention,  singularly* 


136         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

inconducive  to  the  enjoyment  of  food  or  to 
the  sober  business  of  digestion,  but  that 
they  were  of  such  interminable  length.  The 
plain  fact  was  that  by  utilizing  almost  every 
moment  between  eight  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing and  nine  o'clock  at  night  we  could  for- 
tify ourselves  with  enough  material  to  fill 
in  the  hour  or  two  spent  with  Mr.  Pulitzer, 
hours  during  which  we  had  to  supply  an  in- 
cessant stream  of  information,  or  run 
through  a  carefully  condensed  novel  or  play. 

Under  such  circumstances  an  hour  for 
lunch  or  dinner  had  to  be  accepted  as  an  un- 
fortunate necessity;  but  when  it  came,  as  it 
often  did,  to  an  hour  and  a  half  or  two  hours, 
the  encroachment  on  our  time  became  a  seri- 
ous matter. 

At  about  nine  o'clock  Mr.  Pulitzer  went 
to  the  library.  One  of  the  secretaries  accom- 
panied him  and  read  aloud  until,  on  the 
stroke  of  ten,  Dunningham  came  and  an- 
nounced that  it  was  bedtime. 

An  extraordinary,  and  in  some  respects  a 
most  annoying  feature  of  this  final  task  of 
the  day,  viewed  from  the  secretary's  stand- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  137 

point,  was  that  from  nine  to  ten,  almost  with- 
out cessation,  Mr.  Mann,  the  German  sec- 
retary, played  the  piano  in  the  dining  sa- 
loon, the  doors  communicating  with  the  11- 
braiy  being  left  open. 

In  a  direct  line  the  piano  cannot  have  been 
more  than  ten  feet  from  the  reader's  chair; 
and  the  strain  of  reading  aloud  for  an  hour 
against  a  powerful  rendering  of  the  most 
vigorous  compositions  of  Liszt,  Wagner, 
Beethoven,  Brahms  and  Chopin  was  a  most 
trying  ordeal  for  voice,  brain  and  nerves. 
Mr.  Pulitzer  could  apparently  enjoy  the 
music  and  the  reading  at  the  same  time. 
Often,  when  something  was  played  of  which 
he  knew  the  air,  he  would  follow  the  notes 
by  means  of  a  sort  of  subdued  whistle,  beat- 
ing time  with  his  hand ;  but  this  did  not  take 
his  mind  off  the  reading,  and  if  you  allowed 
your  attention  to  wander  for  a  moment  and 
failed  to  read  with  proper  emphasis  he  would 
say:  "Please  read  that  last  passage  over 
again,  and  do  try  and  read  it  distinctly." 

Such  was  the  routine  of  life  on  the  yacht. 
It  was  little  affected  by  our  occasional  visits 


138  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

to  Naples,  Ajaccio  and  other  ports.  Some 
one  always  landed  to  inquire  for  mail  and  to 
procure  newspapers,  one  or  two  of  us  got 
shore  leave  for  a  few  hours,  but  so  far  as  I 
was  concerned,  being  still  in  strict  training 
and  under  close  observation,  my  rare  land- 
ings were  made  only  for  the  purpose  of  hav- 
ing my  observation  and  memory  tested. 

I  brought  back  minute  descriptions  of 
Napoleon's  birthplace  at  Ajaccio,  of  his 
villa  in  Elba,  of  the  tapestries,  pictures  and 
statues  in  the  National  Museum  at  Naples, 
of  the  Acropolis,  of  the  monument  of  Lysi- 
crates,  of  the  Greek  Theater  and  of  the  Ro- 
man Amphitheater  at  Syracuse,  and  of 
whatever  else  I  was  directed  to  observe. 

Mr.  Pulitzer  had  had  these  things  de- 
scribed to  him  a  score  of  times.  He  knew 
which  block  of  seats  in  the  Greek  theater 
at  Neapolis  bore  the  inscription  of  Nereis, 
daughter-in-law  of  King  Heiro  the  Second; 
he  knew  up  what  stairs  and  through  what 
rooms  and  passages  you  had  to  go  to  see 
the  marble  bath  in  Napoleon's  villa  near 
Portof erraio ;  he  knew  from  precisely  what 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  139 

part  of  the  Acropolis  the  yacht  was  visible 
when  it  was  at  anchor  at  the  Piraeus;  he  knew 
the  actual  place  of  the  more  important  pic- 
tures on  the  walls  of  each  room  of  the  Naples 
Museum — such  a  one  to  the  right,  such  a  one 
to  the  left  as  you  entered — he  knew  practi- 
cally everything,  but  specially  he  knew  the 
thing  you  had  forgotten. 

My  exhibitions  of  memory  always  ended, 
as  they  were  no  doubt  intended  to  end,  in  a 
confession  of  ignorance.  If  I  described  five 
pictures,  Mr.  Pulitzer  said:  "Go  on";  when 
I  had  described  ten,  he  said:  "Go  on";  when 
I  had  described  fifteen  he  said:  "Go  on"; 
and  this  was  kept  up  until  I  could  go  on  no 
more.  At  this  point  Mr.  Pulitzer  had  dis- 
covered just  what  he  wanted  to  know — how 
much  I  could  see  in  a  given  time,  and  how 
much  of  it  I  could  remember  with  a  fair  de- 
gree of  accuracy.  It  was  simply  the  game 
of  the  jewels  which  Lurgan  Sahib  played 
with  Kim,  against  a  different  background 
but  with  much  the  same  object. 

In  the  foregoing  description  of  Mr. 
Pulitzer's  daily  life  it  has  been  made  abun- 


140         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

dantly  clear  that  his  secretaries  were  worked 
to  the  Hmit  of  their  endurance.  It  remains 
to  add  that  Mr.  Puhtzer  never  made  a  de- 
mand upon  us  which  was  greater  than  the 
demand  he  made  upon  himself. 

He  was  a  tremendous  worker;  and  in  re- 
ceiving our  reports  no  vital  fact  ever  es- 
caped him.  If  we  missed  one  he  imme- 
diately "sensed"  it,  and  his  untiring  cross- 
examination  clung  to  the  trail  until  he  un- 
earthed it. 

We  had  youth,  health  and  numbers  on  our 
side,  yet  this  man,  aged  by  suffering,  tor- 
mented by  ill-health,  loaded  with  responsi- 
bility, kept  pace  with  our  united  labors,  and 
in  the  final  analysis  gave  more  than  he  re- 
ceived. 

We  brought  a  thousand  offerings  to  his 
judgment;  many  of  them  he  rejected  with 
an  impatient  cry  of  "Next!  Next!  For 
God's  sake!"  But  if  any  subject,  whether 
from  its  intrinsic  importance  or  from  its 
style,  reached  the  standard  of  his  discrimi- 
nation he  took  it  up,  enlarged  upon  it,  il- 
luminated it,  until  what  had  come  to  him  as 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  141 

crude  material  for  conversation  assumed  a 
new  form,  everything  unessential  rejected, 
everything  essential  disclosed  in  the  clear 
and  vigorous  English  which  was  the  vehicle 
of  his  lucid  thought. 

When  I  recall  the  capaciousness  of  his  un- 
derstanding, the  breadth  of  his  experience, 
the  range  of  his  information,  and  set  them 
side  by  side  with  the  cruel  limitations  im- 
posed upon  him  by  his  blindness  and  by  his 
shattered  constitution,  I  forget  the  severity 
of  his  discipline,  I  marvel  only  that  his  self- 
control  should  have  served  him  so  well  in 
the  tedious  business  of  breaking  a  new  man 
to  his  service. 


CHAPTER   V 

Getting  to  Know  Mr.  Pulitzer 

AS  time  passed,  my  relations  with  Mr. 
Pulitzer  became  more  agreeable.  He 
had  given  me  fair  warning  that  the  first  few 
weeks  of  my  trial  would  be  more  or  less  un- 
pleasant; a  month  at  Cap  Martin  and  a 
month  on  the  yacht  had  amply  verified  his 
prediction. 

But  this  period  of  probation,  laborious 
and  nerve-racking  as  it  was,  enabled  me  to 
appreciate  how  important  it  was  for  J.  P. 
to  put  to  a  severe  test  of  ability,  tact  and 
good  temper  any  one  whom  he  intended  to 
attach  to  his  personal  staff. 

His  total  blindness  placed  him  completely 
in  the  hands  of  those  around  him,  and,  in 
order  that  he  might  enjoy  that  sense  of  per- 
fect security  without  which  his  life  would 

142 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  143 

have  been  intolerable,  it  was  necessary  that 
he  should  be  able  to  repose  absolute  confi- 
dence in  the  loyalty  and  intelligence  of  his 
companions. 

It  was  not  with  reference  to  his  blindness 
alone  that  the  qualifications  of  his  secretaries 
were  measured.  Indeed,  to  the  loss  of  his 
sight  he  had  become,  in  some  measure,  rec- 
onciled; what  really  dominated  every  other 
consideration  was  the  need  of  being  able  to 
meet  the  peculiar  conditions  which  had  arisen 
through  the  complete  breakdown  of  his  nerv- 
ous system. 

I  have  spoken  of  his  extreme  sensitiveness 
to  noise.  It  is  impossible  to  give  any  de- 
scription of  this  terrible  symptom  which 
shall  be  in  any  way  adequate.  Many  of  us 
suffer  torment  through  the  hideous  clamor 
which  appears  to  be  inseparable  from  mod- 
ern civilization ;  but  to  Mr.  Pulitzer  even  the 
sudden  click  of  a  spoon  against  a  saucer,  the 
gurgle  of  water  poured  into  a  glass,  the 
striking  of  a  match,  produced  a  spasm  of 
sufi*ering.  I  have  seen  him  turn  pale,  trem- 
ble, break  into  a  cold  perspiration  at  some 


144         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

sound  which  to  most  people  would  have  been 
scarcely  audible. 

When  we  were  on  the  yacht  every  one  was 
compelled  to  wear  rubber-soled  shoes.  When 
Mr.  Pulitzer  was  asleep  that  portion  of  the 
deck  which  was  over  his  bedroom  was  roped 
off  so  that  no  one  could  walk  over  his  head ; 
and  each  door  which  gave  access  to  the  rooms 
above  his  cabin  was  provided  with  a  brass 
plate  on  wliich  was  cut  the  legend:  "This 
door  must  not  be  opened  when  Mr.  Pulitzer 
is  asleep." 

With  every  resource  at  his  command 
which  ingenuity  could  suggest  and  money 
procure,  the  one  great  unsolved  problem  of 
his  later  years  was  to  obtain  absolute  quiet- 
ness at  all  times.  At  his  magnificent  house 
in  New  York,  at  his  beautiful  country  home 
at  Bar  Harbor  he  had  spent  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  dollars  in  a  vain  effort  to  procure 
the  one  luxury  which  he  prized  above  all 
others.  On  the  yacht  the  conditions  in  this 
respect  were  as  nearly  perfect  as  possible; 
but  some  noise  was  inseparable  from  the 
ship's  work — letting  go  the  anchor,  heaving 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  145 

it  up  again,  blowing  the  foghorn,  and  so  on 
— though  most  of  the  ordinary  noises  had 
been  eHminated. 

As  an  instance  of  the  constant  care  which 
was  taken  to  save  JMr.  PuHtzer  from  noise 
I  remember  that  for  some  days  ahnonds 
were  served  with  our  dessert  at  dinner,  but 
that  they  suddenly  ceased  to  form  part  of 
our  menu.  Being  fond  of  almonds,  I  asked 
the  chief  steward  why  they  had  stopped 
serving  them.  After  a  little  hesitation  he 
said  that  it  had  been  done  at  the  suggestion 
of  the  butler,  who  had  noticed  that  I  broke 
the  almonds  in  half  before  I  ate  them  and 
that  the  noise  made  by  their  snapping  was 
very  disagreeable  to  ]\Ir.  Pulitzer. 

With  the  best  intentions  in  the  world,  our 
meals  were  now  and  then  disturbed  by  noise. 
A  knife  suddenly  slipped  with  a  loud  click 
against  a  plate,  a  waiter  dropped  a  spoon 
on  a  silver  tray,  or  some  one  knocked  over  a 
glass.  We  were  all  in  such  a  state  of  nerv- 
ous tension  that  whenever  one  of  these  little 
accidents  occurred  we  jumped  in  our  chairs 


146  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

as  though  a  pistol  had  been  fired,  and  looked 
at  J.  P.  with  horrified  expectancy. 

There  could  be  no  doubt  whatever  as  to 
the  effect  these  noises  had  upon  him.  He 
winced  as  a  dog  winces  when  you  crack  a 
whip  over  him;  the  only  question  was 
whether  by  a  powerful  effort  he  could  re- 
gain his  composure  or  whether  his  suffering 
would  overcome  his  self-restraint  to  the  ex- 
tent of  making  him  gloomy  or  querulous 
during  the  rest  of  the  meal. 

The  effect  by  no  means  ceased  when  we 
rose  from  table.  If  by  bad  luck  two  or  three 
noises  occurred  at  dinner — and  our  excessive 
anxiety  in  the  matter  was  sometimes  our  un- 
doing— Mr.  Pulitzer  was  so  upset  that  he 
would  pass  a  sleepless  night.  This  in  its 
turn  meant  a  day  during  which  his  tortured 
body  made  itself  master  of  his  mind,  and 
plunged  him  into  a  state  of  profound  de- 
jection. 

Like  most  people  who  suffer  acutely  from 
noise  Mr.  Pulitzer  was  very  differently  af- 
fected by  different  kinds  of  noise.  To  any 
noise  which   was   necessary,   such   as  that 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  147 

caused  by  letting  go  the  anchor,  he  could 
make  himself  indifferent;  but  very  few 
noises  were  included  in  this  category. 

What  caused  him  the  most  acute  suffering 
was  a  noise  which,  while  it  inflicted  pain 
upon  him,  neither  gave  pleasure  to  any  one 
else  nor  achieved  a  useful  purpose.  Loud 
talking,  whisthng,  slamming  doors,  care- 
lessness in  handling  things,  the  barking  of 
dogs,  the  "kick"  of  motor  boats,  these  were 
the  noises  which  made  his  existence  miser- 
able. 

At  the  back  of  his  physical  reaction  was  a 
mental  reaction  which  intensified  every  shock 
to  his  nerves.  He  complained,  and  with 
justice,  that,  leaving  out  of  consideration  an 
occasional  noise  which  was  purely  the  result 
of  accident,  his  life  was  made  a  burden  by 
the  utter  indifference  of  the  majority  of  hu- 
man beings  to  the  rights  of  others.  What 
right,  he  asked,  had  any  one  to  run  a  motor 
boat  with  a  machine  so  noisy  that  it  de- 
stroyed the  peace  of  a  whole  harbor? 
Above  all,  what  right  had  such  a  person  to 


148         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

come  miles  out  to  sea  and  ci-uise  around  the 
yacht,  merely  to  gratify  idle  curiosity? 

He  applied  the  same  test  to  people  who 
shout  at  one  another  in  the  streets,  who  whis- 
tle at  the  top  of  their  lungs,  or  leave  doors  to 
slam  in  the  faces  of  those  behind  them. 

His  resentment  against  these  practices 
was  made  the  more  bitter  by  the  knowl- 
edge that  he  was  absolutely  helpless  in  the 
matter  whenever  he  came  within  hearing  dis- 
tance of  an  ill-bred  person. 

There  was  yet  another  element  in  this 
which  added  to  his  misery.  He  said  to  me 
once,  when  we  had  been  driven  off  the  plage 
at  Mentone  by  two  American  tourists  of  the 
worst  type,  who  at  a  hundred  yards'  distance 
from  each  other  were  yelling  their  views  as 
to  which  hotel  they  proposed  to  meet  at  for 
lunch,  "I  can  never  forget  that  when  I  was 
a  young  man  in  the  full  vigor  of  my  health 
I  used  to  regard  other  people's  complaints 
about  noise  as  being  merely  an  affectation. 
I  would  even  make  a  noise  deliberately  in 
order  to  annoy  any  one  who  forced  the  ab- 
sui'd  pretense  upon  my  notice.    Well,  Mr. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  149 

Ireland,  I  swear  my  punishment  has  been 
heavy  enough." 

To  revert,  however,  to  Mr.  Pulitzer's  de- 
pendence on  those  around  him,  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  nothing  could  reach  him  ex- 
cept through  the  medium  of  speech.  The 
state  of  his  bank  account,  the  condition  of 
his  investments,  the  reports  about  The 
World,  his  business  correspondence,  the 
daily  news  in  which  he  was  so  deeply  inter- 
ested, everything  upon  w^hich  he  based  liis 
relation  with  the  affairs  of  life  he  had  to  ac- 
cept at  second  hand. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  under  these  cir- 
cumstances ]Mr.  Pulitzer  was  easily  deceived, 
that  when  there  was  no  evil  intention,  for  in- 
stance, but  simply  a  desire  to  spare  him  an- 
noyance, the  exercise  of  a  little  ingenuity 
could  shield  him  from  anything  likely  to 
wound  his  feelings  or  excite  his  anger.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  I  have  never  known  a  man 
upon  whom  it  would  not  have  been  easier  to 
practice  a  deception.  His  blindness,  so  far 
from  being  a  hindrance  to  him  in  reaching 
the  truth,  was  an  aid. 


150  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

Two  instances  will  serve  to  illustrate  the 
point.  Suppose  that  I  found  in  the  morn- 
ing paper  an  article  which  I  thought  would 
stir  J.  P.  up  and  spoil  his  day :  when  I  was 
called  to  read  to  him  I  had  no  means  of 
knowing  whether  the  man  whom  I  replaced 
had  taken  the  same  view  as  myself  and  had 
skipped  the  article  or  whether  he  had,  delib- 
erately or  inadvertently,  read  it  to  him.  The 
same  argument  applied  to  the  man  who  was 
to  follow  me.  If  I  read  the  article  to  him  I 
might  find  out  later  that  my  predecessor 
had  omitted  it,  or,  if  I  omitted  it,  that  my 
successor  had  read  it. 

In  either  event  one  of  us  would  be  in  the 
wrong;  and  it  was  impossible  to  tell  in  ad- 
vance whether  the  man  who  read  it  would  be 
blamed  for  lack  of  discretion  or  praised  for 
his  good  judgment,  as  everything  depended 
upon  the  exact  mood  in  which  Mr.  Pulitzer 
happened  to  be. 

It  was  an  awkward  dilemma  for  the  sec- 
retary, for,  if  he  did  not  read  it  and  another 
man  did,  Mr.  Pulitzer  might  very  well  in- 
terpret the  first  man's  caution  as  an  effort 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  151 

to  hoodwink  him,  or  the  second  man's  bold- 
ness as  an  exhibition  of  indifference  to  his 
feehngs,  or,  what  was  more  Hkely  still,  fas- 
ten one  fault  upon  one  man  and  the  other 
upon  the  other. 

The  same  problem  presented  itself  from  a 
different  direction.  Often,  Mr.  Pulitzer 
would  take  out  of  his  pocket  a  bundle  of 
papers — newspaper  clippings,  letters,  statis- 
tical reports,  and  memoranda  of  various 
kinds.  Handing  them  to  his  companion  he 
would  say: 

"Look  through  these  and  see  if  there  is  a 
letter  with  the  London  post  mark,  and  a 
sheet  of  blue  paper  with  some  figures  on 
it." 

You  could  never  tell  what  was  behind 
these  inquiries.  Sometimes  he  was  content 
to  know  that  the  papers  were  there,  some- 
times he  asked  you  to  read  them,  and  as  he 
might  very  well  have  them  read  to  him  by 
several  people  during  the  day  he  had  a  per- 
fect check  on  all  printed  or  written  matter 
once  it  was  in  his  hands. 

In  addition  to  all  this  his  exquisite  sense 


152  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

of  hearing  enabled  him  to  detect  the  sHght- 
est  variation  in  your  tone  of  voice.  If  you 
hesitated  or  betrayed  the  least  uneasiness 
his  suspicions  were  at  once  aroused  and  he 
took  steps  to  verify  from  other  sources  any 
statement  you  made  under  such  cu'cum- 
stances. 

It  will  be  readily  understood  that  with 
his  keen  and  analytic  mind  INIr.  Pulitzer 
very  soon  discovered  exactly  w^hat  kind  of 
work  was  best  suited  to  the  capacities  of 
each  of  his  secretaries.  Thus  to  JNIr.  Pater- 
son  was  assigned  the  reading  of  history  and 
biography,  to  Mr.  Pollard,  a  Harvard  man 
and  the  only  American  on  the  personal  staff 
during  my  time,  novels  and  plays  in  French 
and  English,  to  Herr  ^lann  German  lit- 
erature of  all  kinds.  Thwaites  was  chiefly 
occupied  with  !Mr.  Pulitzer's  correspondence, 
and  Craven  with  the  yacht  accounts,  though 
they,  as  well  as  myself,  had  roving  commis- 
sions covering  the  periodical  literature  of 
France,  Germany,  England,  and  America. 

This  division  of  our  reading  was  by  no 
means  rigid;  it  represented  JNIr.  Pulitzer's 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  153 

view  of  our  respective  spheres  of  greatest 
utility ;  but  it  was  often  disturbed  by  one  or 
another  of  us  going  on  sick  leave  or  falling 
a  victim  to  the  weather  when  we  were  at  sea. 

Subject  to  such  chances  Pollard  always 
read  to  Mr.  Pulitzer  during  his  breakfast 
hour,  and  Mann  during  his  siesta^  while  the 
reading  after  dinner  was  pretty  evenly  di- 
vided between  Pollard,  Paterson,  and  my- 
self. 

If  JNIr.  Pulitzer  once  got  it  into  his  head 
that  a  particular  man  was  better  than  any 
one  else  for  a  particular  class  of  work  noth- 
ing could  reconcile  him  to  that  man's  ab- 
sence when  such  work  was  to  be  done. 

An  amusing  instance  of  this  occurred  on 
an  occasion  when  Pollard  was  sea-sick  and 
could  not  read  to  J.  P.  at  breakfast.  I  was 
hurriedly  summoned  to  take  his  place.  I 
was  dumbfounded,  for  I  had  never  before 
been  called  upon  for  this  task,  and  Mr. 
Pulitzer  had  often  held  it  up  to  me  as  the 
last  test  of  fitness,  the  charter  of  your  grad- 
uation. I  had  nothing  whatever  prepared 
of  the  kind  which  J.  P.  required  at  that 


154         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

time,  and  I  knew  that  upon  the  success  of 
his  breakfast  might  very  well  depend  the 
general  complexion  of  his  whole  day. 

In  desperation  I  rushed  into  Pollard's 
cabin,  and  its  unhappy  occupant,  with  a 
generosity  which  even  seasickness  could  not 
chill,  gave  me  a  bundle  of  Spectators,  Athe- 
naeums, and  Literary  Digests,  with  pencil 
marks  in  the  margins  indicating  exactly 
what  he  had  intended  to  read  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  things.  I  breathed  a  sigh  of  re- 
lief and  hastened  to  the  library,  where  I 
found  J.  P.  very  nervous  and  out  of  sorts 
after  a  bad  night. 

He  immediately  began  to  deplore  Pol- 
lard's absence,  on  the  ground  that  it  was 
impossible  for  anyone  to  know  what  to  read 
to  liim  at  breakfast  without  years  of  experi- 
ence and  training.  I  said  nothing,  feeling 
secure  with  Pollard's  prepared  "breakfast 
food,"  as  we  called  it,  in  front  of  me.  I 
awaited  only  his  signal  to  begin  reading, 
confident  that  I  could  win  laurels  for  myself 
without  robbing  Pollard,  whose  wreath  was 
firmly  fixed  on  his  brow. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  155 

Alas  for  my  hopes!  My  very  first  sen- 
tence destroyed  my  chances,  for  I  had  the 
misfortune  to  begin  reading  something 
which  he  had  ah-eady  heard.  Notliing  an- 
noyed him  more  than  tliis;  and  we  all  made 
a  habit  of  writing  "Dead"  across  any  article 
in  a  periodical  as  soon  as  J.  P.  had  had  it, 
so  that  we  could  keep  off  each  other's  trails. 
I  am  willing  to  believe  that  this  was  the  first 
and  only  time  that  Pollard  ever  forgot  to 
kill  an  article  after  he  had  read  it,  but  it 
was  enough,  in  the  deplorable  state  of  Mr. 
Pulitzer's  nerves  that  morning,  to  inflict  a 
wound  upon  my  reputation  as  a  breakfast- 
time  reader  which  months  did  not  suffice  to 
heal. 

With  such  a  bad  start  Mr.  Pulitzer  im- 
mediately concluded  that  I  was  useless,  and 
he  worked  himself  up  into  such  a  state  about 
it  that  passage  after  passage,  carefully 
marked  by  Pollard,  was  greeted  with, 

"Stop!    Stop!    For  God's  sake!"  or, 

"Next!    Next!"  or, 

"My  God!  Is  there  much  more  of  that?" 
or. 


156  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

"Well,  ^Ir.  Ireland,  isn't  there  anything 
interesting  in  all  those  papers?" 

I  bore  up  manfully  against  this  until  he 
made  the  one  remark  I  could  not  stand. 

"Now,  Mr.  Ireland,"  he  said,  his  voice 
taking  on  a  tone  of  gentle  reproach,  "I 
know  you've  done  your  best,  but  it  is  very 
bad.  If  you  don't  beheve  me,  just  take  those 
papers  to  ^Ir.  Pollard  when  he  feels  better; 
don't  disturb  him  now  when  he's  ill;  and 
show  him  what  you  read  to  me.  Now,  just 
for  fun,  I'd  like  you  to  do  that.  He  will 
tell  you  that  there  is  not  a  single  line  which 
you  have  read  that  he  would  have  read  had 
he  been  in  your  place.  I  hope  I  haven't 
been  too  severe  with  you ;  but  I  hold  up  my 
hands  and  swear  that  Mr.  Pollard  wouldn't 
have  read  me  a  line  of  that  rubbish." 

This  was  too  much!  Carefully  control- 
ling my  voice  so  that  no  trace  of  malice 
should  be  detected  in  it,  I  replied : 

"I  took  these  papers  off*  Mr.  Pollard's 
table  a  moment  before  I  came  to  you,  and 
the  parts  I  have  read  are  the  parts  he  had 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  157 

marked,  with  the  intention  of  reading  them 
to  you  himself." 

I  thought  I  had  J.  P.  cornered.  It  was 
before  I  learned  that  there  was  no  such 
thing  as  cornering  J.  P. 

Leaning  toward  me,  and  putting  a  hand 
on  my  shoulder,  he  said: 

"Now,  boy,  don't  be  put  out  about  this. 
I  do  believe,  honestly,  that  you  did  your 
best;  but  you  should  not  make  excuses. 
When  you  are  wrong,  admit  it,  and  try  and 
benefit  by  my  advice.  You  will  find  a  very 
natural  explanation  of  your  mistake.  Per- 
haps the  passages  Mr.  Pollard  marked  were 
the  ones  he  did  not  intend  to  read  to  me,  or 
perhaps  you  took  the  wrong  set  of  papers; 
some  perfectly  natural  explanation  I  am 
sure." 

That  night  at  dinner,  when  I  was  still 
smarting  under  the  sense  of  injustice  born 
of  my  morning's  experience,  J.  P.  gave  me 
an  opening  which  I  could  not  allow  to  pass 
unused. 

Turning  to  me  during  a  pause  in  the  con- 
versation, he  asked: 


158  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

"And  what  have  you  been  doing  this 
afternoon,  Mr.  Ireland?" 

A  happy  inspiration  flashed  across  my 
mind,  and  I  repHed: 

"I've  been  making  a  rough  draft  of  a 
play,  sir." 

"Well,  my  God!  I  didn't  know  you 
wrote  plays." 

"Very  seldom,  at  any  rate;  but  I  had  an 
idea  this  morning  that  I  couldn't  resist." 

"What  is  it  to  be  called?"  inquired  J.  P. 

"  'The  Importance  of  being  Pollard,'  "  I 
answered,  whereupon  J.  P.  and  everyone 
else  at  the  table  had  a  good  laugh.  They 
had  all  been  through  a  breakfast  with  J.  P. 
when  Pollard  was  away,  and  could  sympa- 
thize with  my  feelings. 

Mr.  Pulitzer  was  very  sensible  of  the  diffi- 
culties which  lay  in  everybody's  path  at  the 
times  when  lack  of  sleep  or  a  prolonged  at- 
tack of  pain  had  made  him  excessively  ir- 
ritable; and  when  he  had  recovered  from 
one  of  these  periods  of  strain,  and  was  con- 
scious of  having  been  rough  in  his  manner, 
he  often  took  occasion  to  make  amends. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  159 

Sometimes  he  would  do  this  when  we  were 
at  table,  adopting  a  humorous  tone  as  he 
said,  "I'm  afraid  so-and-so  will  never  for- 
give me  for  the  way  I  treated  him  this  after- 
noon; but  I  want  to  say  that  he  really  read 
me  an  excellent  story  and  read  it  very  well, 
and  that  I  am  grateful  to  him.  I  was  feel- 
ing wretchedly  ill  and  had  a  frightful  head- 
ache, and  if  I  said  anything  that  hurt  his 
feelings  I  apologize." 

Once,  during  my  weeks  of  probation, 
when  J.  P.  felt  that  he  had  carried  his  test 
of  my  good  temper  beyond  reason,  he 
stopped  suddenly  in  our  walk,  laid  a  hand 
on  my  shoulder,  and  asked: 

"What  do  you  feel  when  I  am  unreason- 
able with  you?  Do  you  feel  angry?  Do 
you  bear  malice?" 

"Not  at  all,"  I  replied.  "I  suppose  my 
feeling  is  very  much  like  that  of  a  nurse  for 
a  patient.  I  realize  that  you  are  suffering 
and  that  you  are  not  to  be  held  responsible 
for  what  you  do  at  such  times." 

"I  thank  you  for  that,  JNIr.  Ireland,"  he 
replied.     "You  never  said  anything  which 


160  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

pleased  me  more.  Never  forget  that  I  am 
blind,  and  that  I  am  in  pain  most  of  the 
time." 

A  matter  which  I  had  reason  to  notice  at 
a  very  early  stage  of  my  acquaintance  with 
Mr.  Pulitzer  was  that  when  he  was  in  a  bad 
mood  it  was  the  worst  possible  policy  to  offer 
no  resistance  to  his  pressure.  It  was  part 
of  his  nature  to  go  forward  in  any  direction 
until  he  encountered  an  obstacle.  When  he 
reached  one  he  paused  before  making  up  his 
mind  whether  he  would  go  through  it  or 
round  it.  The  further  he  went  the  more 
interested  he  became,  his  purpose  always 
being  to  discover  a  boundary,  whether  of 
your  knowledge,  of  your  patience,  of  your 
memory,  or  of  your  nervous  endurance. 

He  never  respected  a  man  who  did  not  at 
some  point  stand  up  and  resist  him.  After 
the  line  had  once  been  drawn  at  that  point, 
and  his  curiosity  had  been  gratified,  he  was 
always  careful  not  to  approach  it  too 
closely;  and  it  was  only  on  the  rare  occa- 
sions when  he  was  in  exceptionally  bad  con- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  161 

dition  that  any  clash  occurred  after  the  first 
one  had  been  settled. 

I  put  off  my  own  little  fight  for  a  long 
time,  partly  because  I  was  very  much  af- 
fected by  the  sight  of  his  wretchedness,  and 
partly  because  I  did  not  at  first  realize  how 
necessary  it  was  for  him  to  find  out  just 
how  far  my  self-control  could  be  depended 
upon.  As  soon  as  this  became  clear  to  me 
I  determined  to  seize  the  first  favorable  op- 
portunity which  presented  itself  of  getting 
into  my  intrencliments  and  firing  a  blank 
cartridge  or  two. 

It  was  after  I  had  been  with  him  about 
a  month  that  my  chance  came.  I  had  no- 
ticed that  his  manner  toward  me  was  slowly 
but  steadily  growing  more  hostile,  and  I 
had  been  expecting  daily  to  receive  my  dis- 
missal from  the  courteous  hands  of  Dun- 
ningham,  or  to  find  myself  unable  to  go 
further  with  the  ordeal. 

Finally,  I  consulted  Dunningham,  and 
was  informed  by  him,  to  my  great  surprise, 
that  I  was  doing  very  well  and  that  Mr. 
Pulitzer  was  pleased  with  me.     This  infor- 


162  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

mation  cleared  the  ground  in  front  of  me, 
and  that  afternoon  when  I  was  called  to 
walk  with  Mr.  Pulitzer  I  decided  to  put  out 
a  danger  signal  if  I  was  hard  pressed. 

Eveiything  favored  such  a  course.  J.  P. 
had  enjoyed  a  good  siesta  and  was  feeling 
unusuall}^  well;  if,  therefore,  he  was  very 
disagreeable  I  would  know  that  it  was  from 
design  and  not  from  an  attack  of  nerves. 
Furthermore,  he  selected  a  subject  of  con- 
versation in  regard  to  which  I  was  as  well, 
if  not  better,  informed  than  he  was — a  ques- 
tion relating  to  British  Colonial  policy. 

The  moment  I  began  to  speak  I  saw  that 
his  object  was  to  drive  me  to  the  wall.  He 
flatly  contradicted  me  again  and  again,  in- 
sinuated that  I  had  never  met  certain  states- 
men whose  words  I  repeated,  and,  finally, 
after  I  had  concluded  my  arguments  in  sup- 
port of  the  view  I  was  advancing,  he  said  in 
an  angry  tone,  assumed  for  the  occasion,  of 
course: 

"Mr.  Ireland,  I  am  really  distressed  that 
we  should  have  had  this  discussion.  I  had 
hoped  that,  with  years  of  training  and  ad- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  163 

vice,  I  might  have  been  able  to  make  some- 
thing out  of  you;  but  any  man  who  could 
seriously  hold  the  opinion  you  have  ex- 
pressed, and  could  attempt  to  justify  it  with 
the  mass  of  inaccuracies  and  absurdities  that 
you  have  given  me,  is  simply  a  damned 
fool." 

"I  am  sorry  you  said  that,  Mr.  Pulitzer," 
I  replied  in  a  very  serious  voice. 

"Why,  for  God's  sake,  you  don't  mind 
my  calling  you  a  damned  fool,  do  you?" 

"Not  in  the  least,  sir.  But  when  you  call 
me  a  damned  fool  you  shatter  an  ideal  I  held 
about  you." 

"What's  that?  An  ideal  about  me?  What 
do  you  mean?" 

"Well,  sir,  years  before  I  met  you  I  had 
heard  that  if  there  was  one  thing  above  all 
others  w^hich  distinguished  you  from  all 
other  journalists  it  was  that  you  had  the 
keenest  nose  for  news  of  any  man  living." 

"What  has  that  to  do  with  my  calling  you 
a  damned  fool?" 

"Simply  this,  that  the  fact  that  I'm  a 


164  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

damned  fool  hasn't  been  news  to  me  any 
time  dm-ing  the  past  twenty  years." 

He  saw  the  point  at  once,  laughed  heart- 
ily and,  putting  an  arm  round  my  shoulders, 
as  was  his  habit  with  all  of  us  when  he 
wished  to  show  a  friendly  feeling  or  take 
the  edge  off  a  severe  rebuke,  said: 

"Now,  boy,  you're  making  fun  of  me, 
and  you  must  not  make  fun  of  a  poor  old 
blind  man.  Now,  then,  I  take  it  all  back; 
I  shouldn't  have  called  you  a  damned  fool." 

It  was  from  this  moment  that  my  rela- 
tions with  Mr.  Pulitzer  began,  to  improve. 

A  few  days  after  the  incident  which  I 
have  just  related  we  di'opped  anchor  in  the 
Bay  of  Naples,  and  Mr.  Pulitzer  announced 
his  intention  of  sailing  for  New  York  by  a 
White  Star  boat  the  following  afternoon. 
He  asked  me  to  go  with  him ;  and  I  accepted 
this  invitation  as  the  sign  that  my  period  of 
probation  was  over. 

Everything  was  prepared  for  our  de- 
parture. Dunningham  worked  indefatiga- 
bly.  He  went  aboard  the  White  Star  boat, 
arranged   for  the   accommodation   of   our 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  165 

party,  had  partitions  knocked  down  so  that 
Mr.  Pulitzer  could  have  a  private  dining- 
room  and  a  library,  and  convoyed  aboard 
twenty  or  thirty  trunks  and  cases  contain- 
ing books,  mineral  waters,  wines,  cigars, 
fruit,  special  articles  of  diet,  clothes,  fur 
coats,  rugs,  etc.,  for  J.  P. 

We  all  packed  our  belongings,  tele- 
graphed to  our  friends,  sent  ashore  for  the 
latest  issues  of  the  magazines,  and  sat 
around  in  deck  chairs  waiting  for  the  word 
to  follow  our  things  aboard  the  liner. 

After  half  an  hour  of  suspense  Dunning- 
ham  came  out  of  the  library,  where  he  had 
been  in  consultation  with  J.  P.,  and  as  he 
advanced  toward  us  we  rose  and  made  our 
way  to  the  gangway,  where  one  of  the 
launches  was  swinging  to  her  painter. 

Dunningham,  smiling  and  imperturbable 
as  ever,  raised  his  hand  and  said,  "No,  gen- 
tlemen, Mr.  Pulitzer  has  changed  his  mind ; 
we  are  not  going  to  America.  We  remain 
on  the  yacht  and  sail  this  afternoon  for 
Athens." 

He  disappeared  over  the  side,  and  an  hour 


166  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

or  two  later  returned  with  the  chef  and  the 
butler  and  one  of  the  saloon  stewards,  who 
had  gone  aboard  the  liner  to  make  things 
ready,  and  some  tons  of  baggage. 

We  sailed  just  as  the  White  Star  boat 
cleared  the  end  of  the  mole.  When  she 
passed  us,  within  a  hundred  yards,  she 
dipped  her  flag.  I  was  walking  with  Mr. 
Pulitzer  at  the  time  and  mentioned  the  ex- 
change of  salutes.  He  was  silent  for  a  few 
minutes.  Then  he  asked,  "Has  she  passed 
us?"  "Yes,"  I  rephed,  "she's  half-a-mile 
ahead  of  us  now."  "Have  you  got  your  pad 
with  you?  Just  make  a  note  to  ask  Thwaites 
to  cable  to  New  York  from  the  next  port 
we  call  at  and  tell  someone  to  send  two  hun- 
dred of  the  best  Havana  cigars  to  the  cap- 
tain. That  man  has  some  sense.  Most  cap- 
tains would  have  blown  their  damned  whistle 
when  they  dipped  their  flag.  Have  a  note 
written  to  the  captain  telling  him  that  I  ap- 
preciated his  consideration." 

Our  voyage  to  Athens  and  thence,  through 
the  Corinth  Canal,  back  to  Mentone,  was 
free  from  incident.    J.  P.  discussed  the  pos- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER         167 

sibility  of  going  to  Constantinople  or  to 
Venice,  but  our  cabled  inquiries  about  the 
weather  brought  discouraging  replies  de- 
scribing an  unusually  cold  season,  and  these 
projects  were  abandoned. 

About  this  time  Mr.  Pulitzer's  health 
showed  a  marked  improvement,  which  was 
reflected  in  the  most  agreeable  manner  in 
the  general  conditions  of  life  on  the  yacht. 
He  had  been  worried  for  some  weeks  about 
Ills  plans  for  going  to  New  York,  and  this 
had  interfered  with  his  sleep,  had  increased 
his  nervousness  and  aggravated  every  symp- 
tom of  his  physical  weakness.  With  this 
matter  finally  disposed  of  he  could  look  for- 
ward to  a  peaceful  cruise,  during  which  he 
would  be  able  to  catch  up  with  his  careful 
reading  of  the  marked  file  of  The  World, 
and  thus  remove  a  weight  from  his  mind. 

He  detested  having  work  accumulate  on 
his  hands,  but  when  his  health  was  worse 
than  usual  this  was  unavoidable.  He  al- 
ways drove  himself  to  the  last  ounce  of  his 
endurance,  and  it  was  only  when  his  condi- 
tion indicated  an  imminent  collapse  that  he 


168  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

would  consent  to  drop  everything  except 
light  reading,  and  to  spend  a  few  days  out 
at  sea  without  calhng  anywhere  for  letters, 
papers,  or  cables. 

It  was  during  this,  our  last,  cruise  in  the 
Mediterranean  that  I  discovered  that  Mr. 
Pulitzer  was  one  of  the  best  and  most  fas- 
cinating talkers  I  had  ever  heard.  Once  in 
a  while,  when  he  was  feeling  cheerful  after 
a  good  night's  rest  and  a  pleasant  day's 
reading,  he  monopolized  the  conversation  at 
lunch  or  dinner.  He  was  generally  more 
willing  to  talk  when  we  took  our  meals  at  a 
large  round  table  on  deck,  for  he  loved  the 
sea  breeze  and  was  soothed  by  it. 

When  he  talked  he  simply  compelled  your 
attention.  I  often  felt  that,  if  he  had  not 
made  his  career  otherwise,  he  might  have 
been  one  of  the  world's  greatest  actors,  or 
one  of  its  most  popular  orators.  In  flexi- 
biUty  of  tone,  in  variety  of  gesture,  in  the 
change  of  his  facial  expression  he  was  the 
peer  of  anyone  I  have  seen  on  the  stage. 

To  an  extraordinary  flow  of  language  he 
added  a  range  of  information  and  a  vivid- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  169 

ness  of  expression  truly  astonishing.  His 
favorite  themes  were  poUtics  and  the  lives 
of  great  men.  To  his  monologues  on  the 
former  subject  he  brought  a  ripe  wisdom, 
based  upon  the  most  extensive  reading  and 
the  shrewdest  observation,  and  quickened  by 
the  keenest  enthusiasm.  He  was  by  no 
means  a  political  bigot ;  and  there  was  not  a 
political  experiment,  from  the  democracy  of 
the  Greeks  to  the  referendum  in  Switzer- 
land, with  the  details  of  which  he  was  not 
perfectly  familiar.  Although  he  was  a  con- 
vinced believer  in  the  Republican  form  of 
government,  having,  as  he  expressed  it,  "no 
use  for  the  King  business,"  he  was  fully 
alive  to  the  peculiar  dangers  and  difficulties 
with  which  modern  progress  has  confronted 
popular  institutions. 

When  the  publication  of  some  work 
like  Rosebery's  Chatham  or  Monypenny's 
Disraeli  afforded  an  occasion,  Mr.  Pulitzer 
would  spend  an  hour  before  we  left  the 
table  in  giving  us  a  picture  of  some  exciting 
crisis  in  English  politics,  the  high  lights 
picked  out  in  pregnant  phrases  of  charac- 


170         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

terization,  in  brilliant  ejDitome  of  the  facts, 
in  spontaneous  epigram,  and  illustrative 
anecdote.  Whether  he  spoke  of  the  Hol- 
land House  circle,  of  the  genius  of  Crom- 
well, of  Napoleon's  campaigns,  or  sought 
to  point  a  moral  from  the  lives  of  Bis- 
marck, Metternich,  Louis  XI,  or  Kossuth, 
every  sentence  was  marked  by  the  same  pen- 
etrating analysis,  the  same  facihty  of  ex- 
pression, the  same  clearness  of  thought. 

On  rare  occasions  he  talked  of  his  early 
days,  telling  us  in  a  charming,  simple,  and 
unaffected  manner  of  the  tragic  and  humor- 
ous episodes  with  which  his  youth  had  been 
crowded.  Of  the  former  I  recall  a  striking 
descrij^tion  of  a  period  during  which  he 
filled  two  positions  in  St.  Louis,  one  involv- 
ing eight  hours'  work  during  the  day,  the 
other  eight  hours  during  the  night.  Four 
of  the  remaining  eight  were  devoted  to 
studying  English. 

His  first  connection  with  journalism  arose 
out  of  an  experience  which  he  related  with 
a  wealth  of  detail  which  showed  how  deeply 
it  had  been  burned  into  his  memory. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  171 

When  he  arrived  in  St.  Louis  he  soon 
found  himself  at  the  end  of  his  resources, 
and  was  faced  with  the  absolute  impossibil- 
ity of  securing  work  in  that  city.  In  com- 
pany with  forty  other  men  he  applied  at 
the  office  of  a  general  agent  who  had  ad- 
vertised for  hands  to  go  down  the  Missis- 
sippi and  take  up  well-paid  posts  on  a 
Louisiana  sugar  plantation.  The  agent  de- 
manded a  fee  of  five  dollars  from  each  ap- 
plicant, and,  by  pooling  their  resources,  the 
members  of  this  wretched  band  managed  to 
meet  the  charge.  The  same  night  they  were 
taken  on  board  a  steamer  which  immediately 
started  down  river.  At  three  o'clock  in  the 
morning  they  were  landed  on  the  river  bank 
about  forty  miles  below  St.  Louis,  at  a  spot 
where  there  was  neither  house,  road,  nor 
clearing.  Before  the  marooned  party  had 
time  to  realize  its  phght  the  steamer  had 
disappeared. 

A  council  of  war  was  held,  and  it  was 
decided  that  they  should  tramp  back  to  St. 
Louis,  and  put  a  summary  termination  to 
the  agent's  career  by  storaiing  his  office  and 


172  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

murdering  him.  Whether  or  not  this  reek- 
less  program  would  have  been  carried  out 
it  is  impossible  to  say,  for  when,  three 
days  later,  the  ragged  army  arrived  in  the 
city,  worn  out  Mith  fatigue  and  half  dead 
from  hunger,  the  agent  had  decamped. 

A  reporter  happened  to  pick  up  the  story, 
and  by  mere  chance  met  Pulitzer  and  in- 
duced him  to  write  out  in  German  the  tale 
of  his  experiences.  This  account  created 
such  an  impression  on  the  mind  of  the  editor 
through  whose  hands  it  passed  that  Pulitzer 
was  offered,  and  accepted,  with  the  greatest 
misgivings,  as  he  solemnly  assured  us,  a 
position  as  reporter  on  the  Westliclie  Post. 

The  event  proved  that  there  had  been  no 
grounds  for  J.  P.'s  modest  doubts.  After 
he  had  been  some  time  on  the  paper,  things 
went  so  badly  that  two  reporters  had  to  be 
got  rid  of.  The  editor  kept  Pulitzer  on  the 
staff,  because  he  felt  that  if  anyone  was 
destined  to  force  him  out  of  the  editorial 
chair  it  was  not  a  young,  uneducated  for- 
eigner, who  could  hardlj'^  mumble  half-a- 
dozen  words  of  English.     The  editor  was 


JOSEPH    PULITZER 
AT    THE    AGE    OF    TWENTY'THREE 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  173 

mistaken.  Within  a  few  years  J.  P.  not 
only  supplanted  him  but  became  half-pro- 
prietor of  the  paper. 

Another  interesting  anecdote  of  his  early 
days,  which  he  told  with  great  relish,  re- 
lated to  his  experience  as  a  fireman  on  a 
Mississippi  ferryboat.  His  limited  knowl- 
edge of  English  was  regarded  by  the  captain 
as  a  personal  affront,  and  that  fire-eating 
old-timer  made  it  his  particular  business  to 
let  young  Pulitzer  feel  the  weight  of  his 
authority.  At  last  the  overwork  and  the 
constant  bullying  drove  J.  P.  into  revolt, 
and  he  left  the  boat  after  a  violent  quarrel 
with  the  captain. 

Whenever  J.  P.  reached  this  point  in  the 
story,  and  I  heard  him  tell  it  several  times, 
his  face  lighted  up  with  amusement,  and 
he  had  to  stop  until  he  had  enjoyed  a  good 
laugh. 

"Well,  my  God!"  he  would  conclude, 
"about  two  years  later,  when  I  had  learned 
English  and  studied  some  law  and  been 
made  a  notary  public,  this  very  same  captain 
walked  into  my  office  in  St.  Louis  one  day 


174         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

to  have  some  documents  sealed.  As  soon  as 
he  saw  me  he  stopped  short,  as  if  he  had 
seen  a  ghost,  and  said,  *'Say,  ain't  you  the 
damned  cuss  that  I  fired  off  my  boat?" 

"I  told  him  yes,  I  was.  He  was  the  most 
surprised  man  I  ever  saw,  but  after  he  had 
sworn  himself  hoarse  he  faced  the  facts  and 
gave  me  his  business." 

Mr.  Pulitzer  always  declared  that  the 
proudest  day  of  his  life,  the  occasion  on 
which  his  vanity  was  most  tickled,  was  when 
he  was  elected  to  the  Missouri  Legislature. 
Things  were  evidently  run  in  a  rather 
happy-go-lucky  fashion  in  those  early  days, 
since,  as  he  admitted  with  a  reminiscent 
smile,  he  was  absolutely  disqualified  for  elec- 
tion, being  neither  an  American  citizen  nor 
of  age. 

Mr.  Pulitzer's  anecdotes  about  himself  al- 
ways ended  in  one  way.  He  would  break 
off  suddenly  and  exclaim,  "For  Heaven's 
sake,  why  do  you  let  me  run  on  like  this; 
as  soon  as  a  man  gets  into  the  habit  of  talk- 
ing about  his  past  adventures  he  might  just 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  175 

as  well  make  up  his  mind  that  he  is  grow- 
ing old  and  that  his  intellect  is  giving  way." 
It  was  this  strong  disinclination  for  per- 
sonal reminiscence  which  prevented  Mr. 
Pulitzer,  despite  many  urgent  appeals,  from 
writing  his  autobiography.  It  is  a  thousand 
pities  that  he  adhered  to  this  resolution,  for 
his  career,  as  well  in  point  of  interest  as  in 
achievement  and  picturesqueness,  would 
have  stood  the  test  of  comparison  with  that 
of  any  man  whose  life-story  has  been  pre- 
served in  literature. 


CHAPTER   VI 

Wiesbaden  and  an  Atlantic  Voyage 

AT  last  the  time  came  when  we  had  to 
leave  the  yacht  and  make  a  pilgrim- 
age to  Wiesbaden,  in  order  that  Mr.  Pulit- 
zer might  submit  to  a  cure  before  sailing  for 
New  York. 

The  first  stage  of  our  journey  took  us 
from  Genoa  to  Milan.  Here  we  stayed  for 
five  hours  so  that  J.  P.  could  have  his  lunch 
and  his  siesta  comfortably  at  an  hotel.  Pat- 
erson  had  been  sent  ahead  two  or  three  days 
in  advance  to  look  over  the  hotels  and  to 
select  the  one  which  promised  to  be  least 
noisy.  On  our  arrival  in  Milan  J.  P.  was 
taken  to  an  automobile,  and  in  ten  minutes 
he  was  in  his  rooms. 

Simple  as  these  arrangements  appear 
from  the  bald  statement  of  what  actually 

176 


JOSEPH  PULITZER         177 

happened  they  really  involved  a  great  deal 
of  care  and  forethought.  It  was  not  enough 
that  Paterson  should  visit  half-a-dozen 
hotels  and  make  his  choice  from  a  cursory 
inspection.  After  his  choice  had  been  nar- 
rowed down  by  a  process  of  elimination  he 
had  to  spend  several  hours  in  each  of  two 
or  three  hotels,  in  the  room  intended  for 
J.  P.,  so  that  he  could  detect  any  of  the 
hundred  noises  which  might  make  the  room 
uninliabitable  to  its  prospective  tenant. 

The  room  might  be  too  near  the  elevator, 
it  might  be  too  near  a  servants'  staircase,  it 
might  overlook  a  courtyard  where  carpets 
were  beaten,  or  a  street  with  heavy  traffic,  it 
might  be  within  earshot  of  a  dining-room 
where  an  orchestra  played  or  a  smoking- 
room  with  the  possibility  of  loud  talking,  it 
might  open  off  a  passage  which  gave  access 
to  some  much  frequented  reception-room. 

Most  of  these  points  could  be  determined 
by  merely  observing  the  location  of  the 
room.  But  other  things  were  to  be  consid- 
ered. Did  the  windows  rattle,  did  the  floor 
creak,  did  the  doors  open  and  shut  quietly, 


178         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

was  the  ventilation  good,  were  there  noisy 
guests  in  the  adjoining  rooms? 

Tliis  last  difficulty  was,  I  understand, 
usually  overcome  by  Mr.  Pulitzer  engaging, 
in  addition  to  his  own  room,  a  room  on  either 
side  of  it,  three  rooms  facing  it,  the  room 
above  it  and  the  room  beneath  it. 

Even  the  question  of  the  drive  from  the 
station  to  the  hotel  had  to  be  thought  out. 
A  trial  trip  was  made  in  an  automobile.  If 
the  route  followed  a  car  line  or  passed  any 
spot  likely  to  be  noisy,  such  as  a  market 
place  or  a  school  playground,  or  if  it  led 
over  a  roughly  paved  road  on  which  the  car 
would  jolt,  another  route  had  to  be  selected, 
which,  as  far  as  possible,  dodged  the  unfa- 
vorable conditions. 

Our  carefully  arranged  journey  passed 
without  incident.  We  had  a  private  car 
from  Milan  to  Frankfort  and  another  for 
the  short  run  to  Wiesbaden,  where  we  ar- 
rived in  time  for  lunch  on  the  day  after  our 
departure  from  Genoa.  Everything  had 
been  prepared  for  our  reception  by  some 
one  who  had  made  similar  aiTangements  on 


JOSEPH    PULITZER    IN    1906, 
TAKEN    ON    THE   TRAIN    BETWEEN    LONDON    AND    DOVER 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  179 

former  occasions.  We  occupied  the  whole 
of  a  villa  belonging  to  one  of  the  large 
hotels,  and  situated  less  than  a  hundred 
yards  from  it. 

In  the  main  our  life  was  modeled  upon 
that  at  the  Cap  Martin  villa;  but  part  of 
Mr.  Pulitzer's  morning  was  devoted  to 
baths,  massage,  and  the  drinking  of  waters. 
Our  meals  were  taken,  as  a  rule,  either  in  a 
private  dining-room  at  the  hotel  or  in  the 
big  restaurant  of  the  Kurhaus;  but  when 
Mr.  Pulitzer  was  feeling  more  than  usually- 
tired  the  table  was  laid  in  the  dining-room 
of  the  villa. 
/  Our  dinners  at  the  Kurhaus  were  a  wel- 
come change  from  our  ordinary  meals  with 
their  set  routine  of  literary  discussions.  Mr. 
Pulitzer  was  immensely  interested  in  peo- 
ple; but  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  meet 
them,  except  on  rare  occasions,  because  the 
excitement  was  bad  for  his  health.  When- 
ever he  dined  in  a  crowded  restaurant,  how- 
ever, our  time  was  fully  occupied  in  describ- 
ing with  the  utmost  minuteness  the  men, 
women,  and  children  around  us. 


180  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

The  Kurhaus  was  an  excellent  place  for 
the  exercise  of  our  descriptive  powers.  In 
addition  to  the  ordinary  crowd  of  pleasure- 
seekers  and  health-hunters  there  were,  dur- 
ing a  great  part  of  our  visit,  a  large  num- 
ber of  military  men,  for  the  Kaiser  spent  a 
week  at  Wiesbaden  that  year  and  reviewed 
some  troops,  and  this  involved  careful 
preparation  in  advance  by  a  host  of  court 
officials  and  high  army  officers. 

Under  these  circumstances  the  dining- 
room  of  the  Kurhaus  presented  a  scene  full 
of  color  and  animation.  Sometimes  J.  P. 
said  to  one  of  us:  "Look  around  for  a  few 
minutes  and  pick  out  the  most  interesting- 
looking  man  and  woman  in  the  room,  ex- 
amine them  carefully,  try  and  catch  the  tone 
of  their  voices,  and  when  you  are  ready  de- 
scribe them  to  me."  Or  he  might  say:  "I 
hear  a  curious,  sharp,  incisive  voice  some- 
where over  there  on  my  right.  There  it  is 
now — don't  you  hear  it? — s  s  s  s  s,  every  s 
like  a  hiss.  Describe  that  man  to  me;  tell 
me  what  kind  of  people  he's  talking  to;  tell 
me  what  you  think  his  profession  is."    Or 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  181 

it  might  be:  "There  are  some  gabbling 
women  over  there.  Describe  them  to  me. 
How  are  they  dressed,  are  they  painted,  are 
they  wearing  jewels,  how  old  are  they?" 

In  whatever  form  the  request  was  made 
its  fulfilment  meant  a  description  covering 
everything  which  could  be  detected  by  the 
eye  or  surmised  from  any  available  clew. 

Describing  people  to  J.  P.  was  by  no 
means  an  easy  task.  It  was  no  use  saying 
that  a  man  had  a  medium-sized  nose,  that  he 
was  of  average  height,  and  that  his  hair  was 
rather  dark.  Ever3i;hing  had  to  be  given 
in  feet  and  inches  and  in  definite  colors. 
You  had  to  exercise  your  utmost  powers  to 
describe  the  exact  cast  of  the  features,  the 
peculiar  texture  and  growth  of  the  hair,  the 
expression  of  the  eyes,  and  every  little  trick 
of  gait  or  gesture. 

Mr.  Pulitzer  was  very  sceptical  of  every- 
body's faculty  of  description.  He  made  us 
describe  people,  and  specially  his  own  chil- 
dren and  others  whom  he  knew  well,  again 
and  again,  and  his  unwillingness  to  accept 
any  description  as  being  good  rested  no 


182  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

doubt  upon  the  wide  divergence  between  the 
different  descriptions  he  received  of  the 
same  person. 

There  were  few  things  which  Mr.  Pulitzer 
enjoj'^ed  more  than  having  a  face  described 
to  him,  whether  of  a  hving  person  or  of  a 
portrait,  and  as  our  table-talk  was  often 
about  men  and  women  of  distinction  or  no- 
toriety, dead  or  living,  any  one  of  us  might 
be  called  upon  at  any  time  to  portray  fea- 
ture by  feature  some  person  whose  name  had 
been  mentioned. 

By  providing  ourselves  with  illustrated 
catalogues  of  the  Royal  Academy  exhibi- 
tions and  of  the  National  Portrait  Gallery, 
and  by  cutting  out  the  portraits  with  which 
the  modern  publisher  so  lavishly  decorates 
his  announcements,  we  generally  managed, 
by  pulling  together,  to  cover  the  ground 
pretty  well.  I  have  sat  through  a  meal  dur- 
ing which  one  or  another  of  us  furnished  a 
microscopic  description  of  the  faces  of  War- 
ren Hastings,  Lord  Clive,  President  Wil- 
son, the  present  King  and  Queen  of  Eng- 
land, the  late  John  W.  Gates,  Ignace  Pade- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  183 

rewski,  and  an  odd  dozen  current  murderers, 
embezzlers,  divorce  habitues,  and  candidates 
for  political  office. 

The  delicate  enjoyment  of  this  game  was 
not  reached,  however,  until,  at  the  following 
meal,  one  of  us,  who  had  been  absent  at  the 
original  delineation,  was  asked  to  cover  some 
of  the  ground  that  had  been  gone  over  a  few 
hours  earher.  Mr.  Pulitzer  would  say:  "Is 
Mr.  So-and-So  here?  Well,  now,  just  for 
fun,  let  us  see  what  he  has  to  say  about  the 
appearance  of  some  of  the  people  we  spoke 
about  at  lunch." 

The  result  was  almost  always  an  astonish- 
ing disclosure  of  the  inability  of  intelligent 
people  to  observe  closely,  to  describe  accur- 
ately, and  to  reach  any  agreement  as  to  the 
significance  of  what  they  have  seen.  It  was 
bad  enough  when  the  latest  witness  had  be- 
fore him  the  actual  pictures  on  which  the 
first  description  had  been  based;  even  then 
crooked  noses  became  straight,  large  mouths 
small,  disdain  was  turned  to  affability  and 
ingenuousness  to  guile;  but  where  this  guide 


184  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

was  lacking  the  descriptions  were  often 
ludicrously  discrepant. 

While  we  were  at  Wiesbaden  we  seldom 
spent  much  time  at  the  dinner  table,  as  J.  P. 
usually  took  his  choice  between  walking  in 
the  garden  of  the  Kurhaus  and  listening  to 
the  orchestra  and  going  to  the  opera.  One 
night  we  motored  over  to  Frankfort  to  hear 
Der  Rosenkavalier,  but  the  excursion  was 
a  dismal  failure.  We  had  to  go  over  a 
stretch  of  very  bad  road,  and  with  J.  P. 
shaken  into  a  state  of  extreme  nervousness 
the  very  modern  strains  of  the  opera  failed 
to  please. 

At  the  end  of  the  second  act  J.  P.,  who 
had  been  growing  more  and  more  dismal  as 
the  music  bumped  along  its  disjointed 
course,  either  in  vain  search  or  in  careful 
avoidance  of  anything  resembling  a  pleasant 
sound,  turned  to  me  and  said:  "My  God  I 
I  can't  stand  any  more  of  this.  Will  you 
please  go  and  find  the  automobile  and  bring 
it  round  to  the  main  entrance.  I  want  to  sfo 
home." 

I  saw  a  great  deal  of  Mr.  Pulitzer  while 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  185 

we  were  at  Wiesbaden,  owing  to  the  cir- 
cumstance that  Paterson  was  called  to  Eng- 
land on  urgent  private  affairs  and  Pollard 
was  away  on  leave.  The  absence  of  these 
two  men  was  as  much  regretted  by  the  staff 
as  it  was  by  J.  P.  himself.  Paterson  was, 
from  his  extraordinary  erudition,  seldom  at 
a  loss  for  a  topic  of  conversation  which 
would  rivet  J.  P.'s  attention,  and  Pollard, 
-wiio  had  been  a  number  of  years  with  J.  P., 
was  not  only,  on  his  own  subjects,  the  con- 
versational peer  of  Paterson,  but  was  in  ad- 
dition, from  his  soothing  voice  and  manner 
and  from  his  long  and  careful  study  of  J. 
P.,  invaluable  as  a  mental  and  nervous  seda- 
tive. 

It  was  at  Wiesbaden  that  I  first  began  to 
read  books  regularly  to  J.  P.  I  read  him 
portions  of  the  biographies  of  Parnell,  of 
Sir  William  Howard  Russell,  of  President 
Polk  (very  little  of  this),  of  Napoleon,  of 
Martin  Luther,  and  at  least  a  third  of 
Macaulay's  Essays. 

He  was  a  great  admirer  of  Lord  Macau- 
lay's  writings  and  read  them  constantly,  as 


186  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

he  found  in  them  most  of  the  quahties 
which  he  admired — great  descriptive  power, 
pohtical  acumen,  satire,  neatness  of  plirase, 
apt  comparisons  and  analogies,  and  shrewd 
analysis  of  character.  Many  passages  he 
made  me  read  over  and  over  again  at  dif- 
ferent times.  I  reproduce  a  few  of  his  fa- 
vorite paragraphs  for  the  purpose  of  show- 
ing what  appealed  to  his  taste. 

From  the  Essay  on  Sir  William  Temple, 
the  following  lines  referring  to  the  Right 
Hon.  Thomas  Peregrine  Coui*tenay,  who, 
after  his  retirement  from  public  life,  wrote 
the  Memoirs  of  Temj)le  and  stated  in  his 
preface  that  experience  had  taught  him  the 
superiority  of  literature  to  politics  for  de- 
veloping the  kindUer  feelings  and  conducing 
to  an  agreeable  life: 

He  has  little  reason,  in  our  opinion,  to  envy 
any  of  those  who  are  still  engaged  in  a  pursuit 
from  which,  at  most,  they  can  only  expect  that, 
by  relinquishing  liberal  studies  and  social  pleas- 
ures, by  passing  nights  without  sleep  and  sum- 
mers witliout  one  glimpse  of  the  beauty  of  nature, 
they  may  attain  that  laborious,  that  invidious, 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  187 

that    closely    watched    slavery    which    is    mocked 
with  the  name  of  power. 

More  often  than  any  others  I  read  him 
the  following  passages  from  the  Essay  on 
Milton: 

The  final  and  permanent  fruits  of  liberty  are 
wisdom,  moderation,  and  mercy.  Its  immediate 
effects  are  often  atrocious  crimes,  conflicting 
errors,  scepticism  on  points  the  most  clear,  dog- 
matism on  points  the  most  mysterious.  It  is  just 
at  this  crisis  that  its  enemies  love  to  exhibit  it. 
They  pull  down  the  scaffolding  from  the  half-fin- 
ished edifice:  they  point  to  the  flying  dust,  the 
falling  bricks,  the  comfortless  rooms,  the  frightful 
irregularity  of  the  whole  appearance;  and  then 
ask  in  scorn  where  the  promised  splendor  and  com- 
fort is  to  be  found.  If  such  miserable  sophisms 
were  to  prevail  there  would  never  be  a  good  house 
or  a  good  government  in  the  world. 

There  is  only  one  cure  for  the  evils  which  newly 
acquired  freedom  produces ;  and  that  cure  is  free- 
dom. 

The  blaze  of  truth  and  liberty  may  at  first 
dazzle  and  bewilder  nations  which  have  become 
half  blind  in  the  house  of  bondage.  But  let  them 
gaze  on,  and  they  will  soon  be  able  to  bear  it.  In 
a  few  years  men  learn  to  reason.  The  extreme 
violence  of  opinion  subsides.  Hostile  theories  cor- 
rect each  other.     The  scattered  elements  of  truth 


188  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

cease  to  contend,  and  begin  to  coalesce.  And  at 
length  a  system  of  justice  and  order  is  educed 
out  of  the  chaos. 

If  men  are  to  wait  for  liberty  till  they  become 
wise  and  good  in  slavery,  they  may  indeed  wait 
forever. 

I  was  surprised  one  day  on  returning  to 
the  villa  after  a  walk  in  the  Kurhaus  gar- 
dens with  J.  P.  to  find  an  addition  to  our 
company  in  the  person  of  the  second  gentle- 
man who  had  examined  me  in  London  at  the 
time  I  had  applied  for  the  post  of  secretary 
to  Mr.  Pulitzer. 

This  gentleman  occupied  what  I  imagine 
must  have  been  the  only  post  of  its  kind  in 
the  world.  He  was,  in  addition  to  whatever 
other  duties  he  performed,  Mr.  Pulitzer's 
villa-seeker. 

It  was  Mr.  Pulitzer's  custom  to  talk  a 
good  deal  about  his  future  plans,  not  those 
for  the  immediate  future,  in  regard  to  which 
he  was  usually  very  reticent,  but  those  for 
the  follo^ving  year,  or  for  a  vague  "some- 
day" when  many  things  were  to  be  done 
which  as  yet  were  nothing  more  than  the 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  189 

toys  with  which  his  imagination  dehghted 
to  play. 

As  he  always  spent  a  great  part  of  the 
year  in  Europe,  a  residence  had  to  be  found 
for  him,  it  might  be  in  Vienna,  or  London, 
or  Berlin,  or  Mentone,  or  in  any  other  place 
which  emerged  as  a  possibility  out  of  the 
long  discussions  of  the  next  year's  itinerary. 

Whenever  the  arguments  in  favor  of  any 
place  had  so  far  prevailed  that  a  visit  there 
had  been  accepted  in  principle  as  one  of  our 
future  movements  it  became  the  duty  of  the 
villa-seeker  to  go  to  the  locality,  to  gather  a 
mass  of  information  about  its  climate,  its 
amenities,  its  resident  and  floating  popula- 
tion, its  accessibility  by  sea  and  land,  the 
opportunities  for  hearing  good  music,  and 
to  report  in  the  minutest  detail  upon  all 
available  houses  which  appeared  likely  to 
suit  Mr.  Pulitzer's  needs. 

These  reports  were  accompanied  by  maps, 
plans,  and  photographs,  and  they  were  con- 
sidered by  J.  P.  with  the  utmost  care.  Par- 
ticular attention  was  paid  to  the  streets  and 
to  the  country  roads  in  the  neighborhood. 


190  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

as  it  was  necessary  to  have  facilities  for  mo- 
toring, for  riding,  and  for  walking. 

The  next  step  was  to  secure  a  villa,  and 
after  that  had  been  done  the  alterations  had 
to  be  undertaken  which  would  make  it  hab- 
itable for  J.  P.  These  might  be  of  a  com- 
paratively simple  nature,  a  matter  of  fitting 
silencers  to  the  doors  and  putting  up  double 
windows  to  keep  out  the  noise;  but  they 
might  extend  much  further  and  involve 
more  or  less  elaborate  changes  in  the  in- 
terior aiTangements.  Even  after  all  this 
had  been  done  a  sudden  shift  of  plans  might 
send  the  villa-seeker  scurrying  across 
Europe  to  begin  the  whole  process  over 
again  in  order  to  be  prepared  for  new  devel- 
opments. 

At  the  time  I  left  London  to  join  J.  P. 
at  Mentone  I  had  stipulated  that,  if  I  should 
chance  to  be  selected  to  fill  the  vacant  post, 
I  should  not  be  called  upon  to  take  up  my 
duties  until  I  had  returned  to  London  and 
spent  a  fortnight  there  in  clearing  up  my 
private  affairs. 

After  we  had  been  a  few  weeks  at  Wies- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  191 

baden  it  became  absolutely  necessary  for  me 
to  go  to  London  for  that  purpose;  and  this 
led  to  a  struggle  with  J.  P.  which  nearly 
brought  our  relations  to  an  end. 

As  soon  as  I  broached  the  subject  of  a 
fortnight's  leave  of  absence  J.  P.  set  his 
face  firmly  against  the  proposal.  This  was 
due  not  so  much  to  any  feeling  on  his  part 
that  my  absence  would  be  an  inconvenience 
to  him,  for  both  Paterson  and  Pollard  had 
returned  to  duty,  but  to  an  almost  uncon- 
querable repugnance  he  had  to  any  one  ex- 
cept himself  initiating  any  plan  which  would 
in  the  slightest  degree  affect  his  arrange- 
ments. His  sensitiveness  on  this  point  was 
so  delicate  that  it  was  impossible,  for  in- 
stance, for  any  of  us  to  accept  an  invitation 
to  lunch  or  dine  with  friends  who  might 
happen  to  be  in  our  neighborhood,  or  to  ask 
for  half  a  day  off  for  any  purpose  v/hatever. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  we  never  got 
away  for  a  meal  or  that  we  were  never  free 
for  a  few  hours;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  J.  P. 
was  by  no  means  ungenerous  in  such  things 
once  a  man  had  passed  the  trial  stage;  but. 


192  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

although  J.  P.  might  say  to  you,  "Take  two 
days  off  and  amuse  yourself,"  or  "Take  the 
evening  off,  and  don't  trouble  to  get  back 
to  work  until  lunch-time  to-morrow,"  it  was 
out  of  the  question  for  you  to  say  to  J.  P. : 
"An  old  friend  of  mine  is  here  for  the  day, 
would  you  mind  my  taking  lunch  with  him?" 

No  one,  I  am  sure,  ever  made  a  suggestion 
of  that  kind  to  J.  P.  more  than  once — the 
effect  upon  him  was  too  startling. 

J.  P.'s  favors  in  the  way  of  giving  time 
off  were  always  granted  subject  to  a  change 
of  mind  on  his  part ;  and  these  changes  were 
often  so  sudden  that  it  was  our  custom  as 
soon  as  leave  was  given  to  disappear  from 
the  yacht  or  the  villa  at  the  earliest  possi- 
ble moment.  But  at  times  even  an  instant 
departure  was  too  slow,  for  it  might  happen 
that  before  you  were  out  of  the  room  J.  P. 
would  say:  "Just  a  moment,  Mr.  So-and-So, 
you  wouldn't  mind  if  I  asked  you  to  put  off 
your  holiday  till  to-morrow,  would  you?  I 
think  I  would  like  you  to  finish  that  novel 
this  evening;  I  am  really  interested  to  see 
how  it  comes  out." 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  193 

This,  of  course,  was  rather  disappointing ; 
but  the  great  disadvantage  of  not  getting 
away  was  that  INIr.  PuHtzer's  memory  gen- 
erally clung  very  tenaciously  to  the  fact  that 
he  had  given  you  leave,  and  lost  the  subse- 
quent act  of  rescinding  it.  The  effect  of 
this  was  that  for  the  practical  purpose  of 
getting  a  day  off  your  turn  was  used  up  as 
soon  as  J.  P.  granted  it,  without  any  refer- 
ence to  whether  you  actually  got  it  or  not; 
and  the  phrase,  "until  to-morrow,"  was  not 
to  be  interpreted  literally  or  to  be  acted  upon 
without  a  further  distinct  permission. 

The  only  "right"  any  of  us  had  to  time 
off  was  to  our  amiual  vacation  of  two  weeks, 
which  we  had  to  take  whenever  J.  P. 
washed.  If,  for  any  reason,  one  of  us 
w^anted  leave  of  absence  for  a  week  or  so, 
the  matter  had  to  be  put  into  the  hands  of 
the  discreet  and  diplomatic  Dunningham; 
and  so  when  the  time  came  when  I  simply 
had  to  go  to  London  it  was  to  Dunningham 
I  went  for  counsel. 

Judging  by  the  results,  his  intercession  on 
my  behalf  was  not  very  successful,  for,  on 


194         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

the  occasion  of  our  next  meeting,  J.  P.  made 
it  clear  to  me  that  if  I  insisted  on  going  to 
London  it  would  be  on  pain  of  his  displeas- 
ure and  at  the  peril  of  my  post.  As  I  look 
back  upon  the  incident,  however,  it  is  quite 
clear  to  me  that  the  whole  of  his  arguments 
and  his  dark  hints  were  launched  merely  to 
test  my  sense  of  duty  to  those  persons  in 
London  whom  I  had  promised  to  see. 

A  day  or  two  later  J.  P.  told  me  that  as  I 
was  going  to  London  I  might  as  well  stay 
there  for  a  month  or  two  before  joining  him 
in  New  York.  He  outlined  a  course  of 
study  for  me,  which  included  lessons  in 
speaking  (my  voice  being  harsh  and  un- 
pleasant) and  visits  to  all  the  principal  art 
galleries,  theaters  and  other  places  of  inter- 
est, with  a  view  to  describing  everything 
when  I  rejoined  him. 

On  the  eve  of  my  departure  Dunningham 
handed  me,  with  Mr.  Pulitzer's  compliments, 
an  envelope  containing  a  handsome  present, 
in  the  most  acceptable  form  a  present  can 
take. 

It  was  not  until  I  was  in  the  train,  and 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  195 

the  train  had  started,  that  I  was  able  to 
realize  that  I  was  free.  During  the  journey 
to  London  my  extraordinary  experiences  of 
the  past  three  months  detached  themselves 
from  the  sum  of  my  existence  and  became 
cloaked  with  that  haze  of  unreality  which  be- 
longs to  desperate  illness  or  to  a  tragedy 
looked  back  upon  from  days  of  health  and 
peace.  Walking  down  St.  James's  Street 
twenty- four  hours  after  leaving  Wiesbaden, 
J.  P.  and  the  yacht  and  the  secretaries  in- 
vaded my  memoiy  not  as  things  experienced 
but  as  things  seen  in  a  play  or  read  in  a  story 
long  ago. 

I  lost  no  time  in  making  myself  comf  ort-^ 
able  in  London.  Inquiries  directed  to  the 
proper  quarter  soon  brought  me  into  touch 
with  a  gentleman  to  whose  skill,  I  was  as- 
sured, no  voice,  however  disagreeable,  could 
fail  to  respond.  I  saw  my  friends,  my  busi- 
ness associates,  my  tailor.  I  went  to  see 
Fanny's  First  Play  three  times,  the  Na- 
tional Portrait  Gallery  twice,  the  National 
Gallery  once,  and  laid  out  my  plans  to  see 
all  the  places  in  London  (shame  forbidding 


196  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

me  to  enumerate  them)  which  every  Eng- 
lishman ought  to  have  seen  and  which  I  had 
not  seen. 

This  lasted  for  about  two  weeks,  during 
which  I  saw  something  of  Craven,  who  had 
left  us  in  Naples  to  study  something  or 
other  in  London,  and  who  was  under  orders 
to  hold  himself  in  readiness  to  go  to  New 
York  with  J.  P.  We  dined  at  my  club  one 
night,  and  when  I  returned  to  my  flat  I 
found  a  telegram  from  Mr.  Tuohy,  instruct- 
ing me  to  join  J.  P.  in  Liverpool  the  next 
day  in  time  to  sail  early  in  the  afternoon  on 
the  Cedric,  as  it  had  been  decided  to  leave 
Craven  in  London  for  the  present. 

The  voyage  differed  but  little  from  our 
cruises  in  the  yacht.  J.  P.  took  liis  meals 
in  his  o\^^l  suite,  and  as  INIrs.  Pulitzer  and 
]Miss  Pulitzer  were  on  board  they  usually 
dined  with  him,  one  of  the  secretaries  mak- 
ing a  fourth  at  table. 

In  the  matter  of  guarding  J.  P.  from 
noise,  extraordinary  precautions  were  taken. 
Heavy  mats  were  laid  outside  his  cabin,  spe- 
cially made  a  dozen  years  before  and  stored 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  197 

by  the  ^^Hiite  Star  people  waiting  his  call; 
that  portion  of  the  deck  which  surrounded 
his  suite  was  roped  oif  so  that  the  passen- 
gers could  not  promenade  there ;  and  a  close- 
fitting  green  baize  door  shut  off  the  corridor 
leading  to  his  quarters.  His  meals  were 
served  by  his  own  butler  and  by  one  of  the 
yacht  stewards;  and  his  daily  routine  went 
on  as  usual. 

During  the  voyage  I  was  broken  in  to 
the  task  of  reading  the  magazines  to  J.  P. 
So  far  as  current  issues  were  concerned  I 
had  to  take  the  ones  he  liked  best — The  At- 
lantic MontJily,  The  American  Magazine^ 
The  Quarterly  Beview,  The  Edinburgh  Re- 
view, The  World's  Work,  and  The  North 
American  Review — and  thoroughly  master 
their  contents. 

While  I  was  engaged  on  this  sufficiently 
arduous  labor  I  made,  on  cards,  lists  of  the 
titles  of  all  the  articles  and  abstracts  of  all 
the  more  important  ones.  I  have  by  me  as  I 
write  a  number  of  these  lists,  and  I  repro- 
duce one  of  them. 

The  following  hst  of  articles  represents 


198         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

what  Mr.  Pulitzer  got  from  me  in  a  highly 
condensed  form  during  one  hour:  "The 
Alleged  Passing  of  Wagner,"  "The  Decline 
and  Fall  of  Wagner,"  "The  Mission  of 
Richard  Wagner,"  "The  Swiftness  of  Jus- 
tice in  England  and  in  the  United  States," 
"The  Public  Lands  of  the  United  States," 
"New  Zealand  and  the  Woman's  Vote," 
"The  Lawyer  and  the  Community,"  "The 
Tariff  Make-believe,"  "The  Smithsonian 
Institute,"  "The  Spirit  and  Letter  of  Ex- 
clusion," "The  Panama  Canal  and  Ameri- 
can Shipping,"  "The  Authors  and  Signers 
of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,"  "The 
German  Social  Democracy,"  "The  Chang- 
ing Position  of  American  Trade,"  "The 
Passing  of  Polygamy." 

I  remember  very  well  the  occasion  on  which 
I  gave  him  these  articles.  We  were  walking 
on  one  of  the  lower  promenade  decks  of  the 
Cedric,  and  J.  P.  asked  me  if  I  had  any 
magazine  articles  ready  for  him.  I  told  him, 
having  the  list  of  articles  in  my  left  hand, 
that  I  had  fifteen  ready.  He  pulled  out  his 
watch,  and  holding  it  toward  me  said: 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  199 

"What  time  is  it?" 

"Twelve  o'clock,"  I  replied. 

"Very  good;  that  gives  us  an  hour  before 
lunch.  Now  go  on  with  your  articles;  I'll 
allow  you  four  minutes  for  each  of  them." 

He  did  not  actually  take  four  minutes  for 
each,  for  some  of  them  did  not  interest  him 
after  my  summary  had  run  for  a  minute  or 
so,  but  we  just  got  the  fifteen  in  during  the 
hour. 

After  all  that  was  possible  had  been  done 
in  the  way  of  reducing  the  number  of  maga- 
zine articles,  by  rejecting  the  unsuitable 
ones,  and  their  length  by  careful  condensa- 
tion, we  were  unable  to  keep  pace  with  the 
supply.  When  a  hundred  or  so  magazines 
had  accumulated  Mr.  Puhtzer  had  the  lists 
of  contents  read  to  him,  and  from  these  he 
selected  the  articles  which  he  wished  to  have 
read;  and  these  arrears  were  disposed  of 
when  an  opportunity  presented  itself. 

At  times  INIr.  Pulitzer  did  not  feel  well 
enough  to  take  this  concentrated  mental 
food,  and  turned  for  relief  to  novels,  plays 
and  light  Hterature;  at  times,  when  he  was 


200  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

feeling  unusually  well,  he  occupied  himself 
for  several  days  in  succession  with  matters 
concerning  Tlie  World — in  dictating  edi- 
torials, letters  of  criticism,  instruction  and 
inquiry,  or  in  considering  the  endless  prob- 
lems relating  to  policy,  business  manage- 
ment, personnel,  and  the  soaring  price  of 
white  paper. 

An  interesting  feature  of  his  activity  on 
behalf  of  The  World  was  his  selection  of 
new  writers.  Although  his  supervision  of 
the  paper  extended  to  every  branch,  from 
advertising  to  news,  from  circulation  to 
color-printing,  it  was  upon  the  editorial  page 
that  he  concentrated  his  best  energies  and 
his  keenest  observation. 

It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  edi- 
torial page  of  The  World  was  to  J.  P.  what 
a  child  is  to  a  parent.  He  had  watched  it 
daily  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  During 
that  time,  I  am  told,  he  had  read  to  him 
seventy-five  per  cent,  of  all  the  editorials 
which  were  printed  on  it,  and  had  every  car- 
toon described.  Those  who  are  interested 
in  the  editorial  page  of  The  Wgrld  should 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  20l 

read  Mr.  John  L.  Heaton's  admirable  His- 
tory of  a  Page,  published  last  year. 

J.  P.'s  theory  of  editorial  writing,  which 
I  heard  hini  propound  a  dozen  times,  called 
for  three  cardinal  qualities — brevity,  direct- 
ness and  style — and,  as  these  could  not  be 
expected  to  adorn  hasty  writing,  he  em- 
ployed a  large  staff  of  editorial  writers  and 
tried  to  limit  each  man  to  an  average  of  half 
a  column  a  day,  unless  exceptional  circum- 
stances called  for  a  lengthy  treatment  of 
some  important  question. 

He  watched  the  style  of  each  man  with 
the  closest  attention,  examining  the  length 
of  the  paragraphs,  of  the  sentences,  of  the 
words,  the  variety  of  the  vocabulary,  the 
choice  of  adjectives  and  adverbs,  the  em- 
ployment of  superlatives,  the  selection  of  a 
heading,  the  nicety  of  adjustment  between 
the  thought  to  be  expressed  and  the  lan- 
guage employed  for  its  expression. 

If  he  chanced  in  the  course  of  his  reading 
to  run  across  any  apt  phrase  in  regard  to 
literary  style  he  would  get  one  of  us  to  type 
a  number  of  copies  and  send  one  to  each  of 


202  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

the  editorial  writers  on  The  World.     The 
following  were  sent  from  Wiesbaden: 

"Thiers  compares  a  perfect  style  to  glass 
through  which  we  look  without  being  conscious 
of  its  presence  between  the  object  and  the  eye." 
(From  Abraham  Hay  ward's  "Essay  on  Thiers.") 

"Lessing,  Lichtenberger,  and  Schopenhauer 
agreed  in  saying  that  it  is  difficult  to  write  well, 
that  no  man  naturally  writes  well,  and  that  one 
must,  in  order  to  acquire  a  style,  work  strenuously 
,     .     t     I  have  tried  to  write  well."     (Nietzsche.) 

J.  P.  was  never  tired  of  discussing  liter- 
ary style,  of  making  comparisons  between 
one  language  and  another  from  the  point  of 
view  of  an  exact  expression  of  an  idea,  or 
of  the  different  sound  of  the  same  idea  ex- 
pressed in  different  languages.  For  in- 
stance, he  asked  us  once  during  an  argument 
about  translations  of  Shakespeare  to  com- 
pare the  lines: 

*'You  are  my  true  and  honorable  wife, 
As  dear  to  me  as  are  the  ruddy  drops 
That  visit  my  sad  heart." 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  203 

with  the  German: 

"Ihr  seid  mein  echtes,  ehrenwertes  Weib, 
So  teuer  mir,  als  wie  die  Purpurtropfen 
Die  um  mein  trauernd  Herz  sich  drangeo." 

and  the  opening  words  of  Hamlet's  solilo- 
quy with  the  German : 

"Sein  oder  Nichtsein,  das  ist  hier  die  Frage." 

Of  the  former  pair  he  greatly  preferred 
the  English,  of  the  latter  the  German. 

Sometimes  we  discussed  at  great  length 
the  exact  English  equivalent  of  some  Ger- 
man or  French  word.  I  remember  one  which 
he  came  back  to  again  and  again,  the  word 
leichtsinnig.  We  suggested  as  transla- 
tions, frivolous,  irresponsible,  hare-brained, 
thoughtless,  chicken- witted,  foolish,  crazy; 
but  we  never  fomid  an  expression  which 
suited  him. 

But  I  have  wandered  away  from  the  sub- 
ject of  editorial  writers.  During  the  time  I 
was  with  J.  P.  he  selected  two,  and  his 
method  of  selection  is  of  interest  in  view  of 


204  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

the  great  importance  he  attached  to  the  edi- 
torial page  of  The  World. 

As  I  have  said  elsewhere,  J.  P.  got  prac- 
tically all  the  important  articles  from  every 
paper  of  consequence  in  the  United  States. 
If  he  read  an  editorial  which  impressed  him, 
possibly  from  a  Chicago  or  a  San  Francisco 
paper,  he  put  it  on  one  side  and  told  Pollard, 
who  read  all  this  kind  of  material  to  him,  to 
watch  the  clippings  from  that  paper  and  to 
pick  out  any  other  editorials  which  he  could 
identify  as  the  work  of  the  same  man.  Five 
years  with  J.  P.  had  made  Pollard  an  ex- 
pert in  penetrating  the  disguise  of  the  edi- 
torial "We." 

As  soon  as  a  representative  collection  of 
the  unknown  man's  writings  had  been  made 
J.  P.  instructed  some  one  on  The  World  to 
find  out  who  the  author  was  and  to  request 
that  he  would  supply  what  he  considered  to 
be  a  fair  sample  of  his  work,  a  dozen  or 
more  articles,  and  a  brief  biography  of  him- 
self. 

If  Mr.  Pulitzer  was  satisfied  with  these 
an  offer  would  be  made  to  the  man  to  join 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  205 

the  staff  of  The  World.  Sometimes  even 
these  gentlemen  were  summoned  to  New 
York,  to  Bar  Harbor,  to  Wiesbaden,  or  to 
Mentone,  according  to  circmnstances.  I  have 
met  several  of  them,  and  they  all  agree  in 
saying  that  the  hardest  work  they  ever  did 
in  their  lives  was  to  keep  pace  with  Mr. 
Pulitzer  while  they  were  running  the  gaunt- 
let of  his  judgment. 

There  are  few  men  highly  placed  on  The 
World  to-day  who  have  not  been  through 
such  an  ordeal.  I  doubt  if  any  man  was 
ever  served  by  a  staif  whose  individual  abil- 
ity, temper,  resources  and  limitations  were 
so  minutely  known  to  their  employer.  He 
knew  them  to  the  last  ounce  of  their  endur- 
ance, to  the  last  word  of  their  knowledge, 
beyond  the  last  veil  which  enables  even  the 
most  intelligent  man  to  harbor,  mercifully, 
a  few  delusions  about  himself. 

To  those  who  did  not  know  Mr.  Pulitzer 
it  may  appear  that  I  exaggerate  his  powers 
in  this  direction.  As  a  matter  of  fact  I  be- 
lieve that  it  would  be  impossible  to  do  so. 

When  he  had  his  sight  he  judged  men  as 


206         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

others  judge  them,  and,  making  full  allow- 
ance for  his  genius  for  observation  and  anal- 
ysis, he  was  no  doubt  influenced  to  some  ex- 
tent by  appearance,  manners  and  associa- 
tions. But  after  he  became  blind  and  re- 
tired from  contact  with  all  men,  except  a 
circle  which  cannot  have  exceeded  a  score  in 
number,  his  judgment  took  on  a  new  meas- 
ure of  clearness  and  perspective. 

As  a  natural  weapon  of  self-defense  he 
developed  a  system  of  searching  examina- 
tion before  which  no  subterfuge  could  stand. 
It  was  minute,  persistent,  comprehensive 
and  ingenious  in  the  last  degree.  It  might 
begin  to-day,  reach  an  apparent  conclusion, 
and  be  renewed  after  a  month's  silence.  In 
the  meantime,  while  the  whole  matter  was 
becoming  dim  in  your  mind,  inquiries  had 
been  made  in  a  dozen  directions  in  regard  to 
the  points  at  issue;  and  when  the  subject  was 
reopened  you  were  confronted  not  only  with 
J.  P.'s  perfect  memory  of  what  you  had  said 
but  with  a  detailed  knowledge  of  matters 
which  you  had  passed  by  as  unimportant,  or 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  207 

deliberately  avoided  for  any  one  of  a  dozen 
perfectly  honest  reasons. 

J.  P.'s  questions  covered  names,  places, 
dates,  motives,  the  chain  of  causation,  what 
you  said,  what  you  did,  what  you  felt,  what 
you  thought,  the  reasons  why  you  felt, 
thought,  acted  as  you  did,  the  reasons  why 
your  thought  and  action  had  not  been  such- 
and-such,  j^our  opinion  of  your  own  conduct, 
in  looking  back  upon  the  episode,  your  opin- 
ion of  the  thoughts,  actions  and  feelings  of 
everybody  else  concerned,  your  conjectures 
as  to  their  motives,  what  you  would  do  if 
you  were  again  faced  with  the  same  prob- 
lem, why  you  would  do  it,  why  you  had  not 
done  it  on  the  previous  occasion. 

Starting  at  any  point  in  your  career  Mr. 
Pulitzer  worked  backward  and  forward 
until  all  that  you  had  ever  thought  or  done, 
from  your  earliest  recollection  down  to  the 
present  moment,  had  been  disclosed  to  him 
so  far  as  he  was  interested  to  know  it,  and 
your  memory  served  you. 

This  process  varied  in  length  according  to 
the  nature  of  the  experiences  of  the  person 


208  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

subjected  to  it,  and  to  the  precise  quality  of 
Mr.  Pulitzer's  interest  in  him.  In  my  own 
case  it  lasted  about  three  months  and  was 
copiously  interspersed  Tvath  written  state- 
ments by  myself  of  facts  about  myself, 
opinions  by  myself  about  myself,  and  end- 
less references  to  people  I  had  known  dur- 
ing the  past  twenty-five  years. 

Mr.  Pulitzer's  attitude  toward  references 
was  the  product  of  vast  experience.  He 
complained  that  scores  of  men  had  come  to 
him  with  references  from  some  of  the  most 
distinguished  people  living,  references  so 
glowing  that  one  man  should  have  been 
ashamed  to  write  them  and  the  other  ashamed 
to  receive  them,  references  of  such  a  charac- 
ter that  their  happy  possessors  might,  with- 
out being  guilty  of  inmiodesty,  have  applied 
for  the  Chief  Justiceship  of  the  United 
States,  the  Viceroyalty  of  India,  the  Arch- 
bishopric of  Canterbury,  the  Presidency  of 
the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons,  or  the  Mas- 
tership of  Baliol,  but  that  the  great  majority 
of  these  men  had  turned  out  to  be  ignorant, 
lazy  and  stupid  to  an  unbelievable  degree. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  209 

When  the  question  of  my  own  references 
came  up  I  hegged  in  a  humorous  way  that, 
having  heard  J.  P.'s  views  about  the  value 
of  testimonials,  my  friends  should  be  spared 
the  useless  task  of  eulogizing  me. 

"No,  my  God!"  exclaimed  J.  P.  "None 
of  them  shall  be  spared.  What  I  said  about 
testimonials  is  all  perf  ectlj'^  true ;  but  it  only 
serves  to  show  what  sort  of  person  a  man 
must  be  who  can't  even  get  testimonials. 
No,  no ;  if  a  man  brings  references  it  j)roves 
nothing;  but  if  he  can't,  it  proves  a  great 
deal." 

Our  voyage  to  New  York  was  marred  by 
but  one  distressing  feature,  the  behavior  of 
two  infants,  one  of  whom  cried  all  day  and 
the  other  all  night.  J.  P.  stood  it  very  well. 
I  think  he  regarded  it  as  one  of  the  few 
necessary  noises.  He  suffered  from  it,  of 
course,  but  the  only  remark  he  ever  made  to 
me  about  it  was: 

"I  really  think  that  one  of  the  most  ex- 
traordinary things  in  the  world  is  the  amount 
of  noise  a  child  can  make.  Here  we  are  with 
a  sixty-mile  gale  blowing  and  some  ten  thou- 


210         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

sand  horse-power  engines  working  inside  the 
ship,  and  yet  that  child  can  make  itself  heard 
from  one  end  of  the  boat  to  the  other.  I 
think  there  must  be  two  of  them;  the  sound 
is  not  quite  the  same  at  night.  Now,  Mr. 
Ireland,  do,  just  for  the  fun  of  it,  find  out 
about  that.  Don't  let  the  mother  know — I 
wouldn't  like  to  hurt  her  feelings;  but  ask 
one  of  the  stewards  about  it." 

In  due  course  we  reached  New  York.  The 
Liberty,  which  had  crossed  directly  from 
Marseilles,  met  us  at  quarantine,  and  Mr. 
Pulitzer  was  transferred  to  her  without  land- 
ing. The  rest  of  us  joined  the  yacht  the 
same  evening.  That  night  we  sailed  for  Bar 
Harbor. 


CHAPTER   VII 

Bar  Harbor  and  the  Last  Cruise 

DURING  the  forenoon  of  the  follow- 
ing- day  we  dropped  anchor  opposite 
the  water-front  of  ]Mr.  Pulitzer's  Bar  Har- 
bor estate.  The  house  was  situated  right  on 
the  rocky  foreshore,  and  was  backed  by  ex- 
tensive grounds  which  completely  cut  it  off 
from  the  noise  of  the  traffic  on  the  main 
road. 

By  means  of  a  flight  of  granite  steps, 
leading  down  from  a  lawn  laid  along  the 
whole  of  the  house-front,  within  containing 
walls,  access  was  had  to  a  pier  to  the  end  of 
which  was  attached  a  floating  pontoon  af- 
fording an  easy  means  of  boarding  the 
yacht's  boats  or  the  launches  which  were  kept 
at  Chatwold  for  use  when  the  house  was  oc- 
cupied. 

211 


212  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

Chatwold  was  a  big,  rambling  place, 
which  had  been  added  to  from  time  to  time 
until  it  was  capable  of  accommodating  about 
twenty  people  in  addition  to  J.  P.,  whose 
quarters  were  in  a  large  granite  structure, 
specially  designed  with  a  view  to  securing 
complete  quietness.  This  building  was  in 
the  form  of  a  tower  about  forty  feet  square 
and  four  stories  high.  On  the  ground  floor 
was  a  magnificent  room,  occupying  the 
whole  lencrth  of  the  tower  and  two-thirds  of 
its  breadth,  which  served  as  a  library  and 
dining-room  for  J.  P.  On  the  side  facing 
the  sea  there  was  a  large  verandah  where 
INIr.  Pulitzer  took  his  breakfast  and  where 
he  sat  a  great  deal  during  the  day  when  he 
was  transacting  business  or  being  read  to. 

The  whole  of  the  basement  of  the  tower 
was  taken  up  by  a  swimming  pool  and  dress- 
ing rooms.  The  water  was  pumped  in  from 
the  sea  and  could  be  heated  by  a  system  of 
steam  pipes.  The  upper  floors  of  the  tower 
were  given  over  to  bedrooms,  for  J.  P.,  for 
the  major-domo  and  for  several  of  the  sec- 
retaries. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  213 

INIost  of  the  servants  were  housed  in  a 
large  building  some  distance  from  the  main 
residence,  and  there  were  separate  quarters 
for  the  grooms  and  stablemen,  and  for  the 
heard  gardener  and  his  assistants. 

While  we  were  at  Chatwold  there  was  a 
gathering  of  the  Pulitzer  family — INIrs.  Jo- 
seph Pulitzer,  a  cousin  of  Jefferson  Davis 
and  a  belle  of  Washington  in  her  day,  who 
married  ]Mr.  Pulitzer  years  before  his  suc- 
cess in  life  had  been  made  and  when  the  fight 
for  his  place  in  journalism  was  still  in  its 
early  stages;  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Ralph  Pulitzer 
and  their  young  son,  Ralph;  Mr.  and  IMrs. 
Joseph  Puhtzer,  Jr.,  Miss  Edith  Pulitzer, 
Miss  Constance  Pulitzer  and  Mr.  Pulitzer's 
youngest  child,  Herbert,  a  boy  of  fifteen. 

The  presence  of  the  family  had  little  ef- 
fect upon  the  routine  of  Mr.  Pulitzer's  daily 
life.  He  saw  as  much  of  his  wife  and  chil- 
dren as  he  could;  but  the  intensity  of  his 
family  emotions  was  such  that  they  could 
only  be  given  rein  at  the  price  of  sleepless 
nights,  savage  pain,  and  desperate  weari- 
ness.   His  interest  in  everything  concerning 


214.  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

the  family  was  overwhelming,  his  curiosity 
inexhaustible.  Everybody  had  to  be  de- 
scribed over  and  over  again,  but  especially 
young  Master  Ralph,  a  bright  and  hand- 
some child,  born  long  after  his  grandfather 
had  become  totally  blind,  and  Master  Her- 
bert, of  whose  appearance  he  retained  only 
a  memory  of  the  dim  impressions  he  had  been 
able  to  gather  years  before  when  a  little 
sight  yet  remained  to  him. 

It  was  at  lunch  and  at  dinner  that  INIr. 
Pulitzer  saw  most  of  the  family.  Pie  almost 
always  took  his  meals  in  the  library  at  a 
table  seating  four ;  and  the  party  usually  in- 
cluded Mrs.  Pulitzer,  one  of  the  other  ladies 
or  Master  Herbert,  and  a  secretary.  I  was 
present  at  a  great  many  of  these  gatherings, 
partly  because  J.  P.  had  gradually  acquired 
a  taste  for  such  humor  as  I  was  able  to  con- 
tribute to  the  conversation,  and  partly  be- 
cause he  relished  a  salad-dressing  which  rep- 
resented my  only  accomj)lishment  in  the  gas- 
tronomic field. 

A  feature  of  the  Bar  Harbor  life  which 
Mr.  Pulitzer  enjoyed  greatly  and  which  he 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  215 

could  not  indulge  In  elsewhere  were  the  long 
trips  he  made  in  a  big  electric  launch  on  the 
sheltered  waters  of  Frenchman's  Bay. 
When  the  weather  was  fine  these  trips  occu- 
pied two  or  three  hours  each  day.  J.  P.  sat 
in  an  armchair  amidships,  with  two  com- 
panions, very  often  his  two  older  sons,  to 
read  to  him  or  to  discuss  business  affairs. 

On  the  occasions  when  I  formed  one  of 
the  party  I  had  the  opportunity  of  observ- 
ing that  so  far  as  the  quantity  and  the  qual- 
ity of  work  were  concerned  it  was  an  easier 
task  to  be  one  of  JNIr.  Pulitzer's  secretaries 
than  to  be  one  of  his  sons.  I  have  never  seen 
men  put  to  a  more  severe  test  of  industry, 
concentration,  and  memory  than  were  Mr. 
Ralph  and  Mr.  Joseph,  Jr.,  while  they  were 
at  Bar  Harbor  or  on  the  yacht. 

It  is  a  pleasure  to  bear  witness  to  the  af- 
fectionate solicitude,  the  patience,  and  the 
good  will  with  which  they  met  the  exacting 
demands  of  their  father.  They  realized,  of 
course,  as  every  one  who  worked  for  J.  P. 
realized  it,  that  the  weight  of  the  burden  he 
placed  upon  you  and  the  strictness  of  the 


216  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

account  to  which  you  were  called  were  the 
truest  measure  of  his  regard. 

Next  to  politics  there  was  nothing  which 
interested  J.  P.  more  than  molding  and  de- 
veloping the  people  around  liim;  and  what 
was  no  more  than  a  strong  interest  when  it 
concerned  his  employees  became  a  passion 
when  it  concerned  his  sons.  His  activities  in 
this  direction  ministered  alike  to  his  love  of 
power  and  to  his  horror  of  wasted  talents; 
they  gratified  his  ever-present  desire  to  dis- 
cover the  boundaries  of  human  character  and 
intellect,  to  explore  the  mazes  of  human  tem- 
perament and  emotion. 

What  vou  knew  and  what  you  were  able 
to  do,  once  you  had  reached  a  certain  stand- 
ard, became  secondary  in  his  interest  to  what 
you  could  be  made  to  know  and  what  you 
could  be  taught  to  do.  He  was  never  con- 
tent that  a  man  should  stand  upon  his  rec- 
ord; growth  and  development  were  the  chief 
aims  of  his  discipline. 

His  method  was  well  illustrated  in  my 
own  case.  One  of  his  earliest  injunctions  to 
me  was  that  I  should  never  introduce  any 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  217 

subject  of  conversation  connected,  in  how- 
ever remote  a  degree,  with  my  travels  or 
with  my  studies  in  relation  to  the  govern- 
ment of  tropical  dependencies.  When,  for 
instance,  he  happened  to  need  some  informa- 
tion about  India  or  the  West  Indies,  he  al- 
ways directed  one  of  the  other  men  to  find  it 
for  him.  This  arrangement  had,  from  his 
standpoint,  the  double  advantage  of  making 
the  other  man  learn  something  of  which  he 
was  ignorant,  and  of  leaving  me  free  to 
work  at  something  of  which  I  was  ignorant. 
Thus  J.  P.  killed  two  intellectual  birds  with 
one  stone. 

It  was  not  only  in  regard  to  mental  ac- 
complishments, however,  that  J.  P.  pursued 
his  plan  of  educating  everybody  around 
him.  He  insisted,  among  other  things,  that 
I  should  learn  to  ride,  not  because  there  was 
any  lack  of  people  who  could  ride  with  him, 
but  because  by  means  of  application  I  could 
add  a  new  item  to  the  list  of  things  I  could 
do.  After  a  dozen  lessons  from  a  groom  I 
progressed  so  far  that,  having  acquired  the 
ability  to  stay  more  or  less  in  the  saddle  while 


218  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

the  horse  trotted,  INIr.  Puhtzer  frequently 
took  me  riding  with  him. 

We  always  rode  three  abreast — a  groom 
on  J.  P.'s  right  and  myself  on  his  left;  and 
conversation  had  to  be  kept  up  the  whole 
time.  This  presented  no  peculiar  difficulties 
when  the  horses  were  walking,  but  when 
they  trotted  I  found  it  no  easy  task  to  keep 
my  seat,  to  preserve  the  precise  distance 
from  J.  P.  which  saved  me  from  touching 
his  stirrup  and  yet  allowed  me  to  speak  with- 
out raising  my  voice,  and  to  leave  enough 
of  my  mind  unoccupied  to  remember  my  ma- 
terial and  to  present  it  without  betraying  the 
discomfort  of  my  position. 

During  these  rides,  and  especially  when 
w^e  were  walking  our  horses  along  a  quiet, 
shady  stretch  of  road,  J.  P.  sometimes  be- 
came reminiscent.  On  one  of  these  occa- 
sions he  told  me  the  story  of  how  he  lost  his 
sight.  As  I  wrote  it  down  as  soon  as  we  got 
back  to  the  house,  I  can  tell  it  almost  in  his 
own  words. 

We  had  been  discussing  the  possibility  of 
his  writing  an  autobiography,  and  he  said. 


JOSEPH    PULITZER    IN    I902, 
RIDING    IN    CENTRAL    PARK    WITH    A    SECRETARY 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  219 

throwing  his  head  back  and  smihng  reflect- 
ively : 

"Well,  I  sometimes  wish  it  could  be  done. 
It  would  make  an  interesting  book;  but  I 
do  not  think  I  shall  ever  do  it.  My  God! 
I  work  from  morning  to  night  as  it  is. 
When  would  I  get  the  time?" 

Then  suddenly  changing  his  mood:  "It 
won't  do  any  harm  for  you  to  make  a  few 
notes  now  and  then,  and  some  day,  perhaps, 
we  might  go  through  them  and  see  if  there 
is  anything  worth  preserving.  Has  any  one 
ever  told  you  how  I  lost  my  sight?  No? 
Well,  it  was  in  November,  1887.  The 
World  had  been  conducting  a  vigorous  cam- 
paign against  municipal  corruption  in  New 
York — a  campaign  which  ended  in  the  ar- 
rest of  a  financier  who  had  bought  the  votes 
of  aldermen  in  order  to  get  a  street  railroad 
franchise." 

At  this  point  he  paused.  His  jaws  set, 
and  his  expression  became  stern,  almost 
fierce,  as  he  added:  "The  man  died  in  jail 
of  a  broken  heart,  and  I  .  .  and  I  .  .  . " 
He  took  a  deep  breath  and  continued  as 


220  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

though  lie  were  reciting  an  experience  which 
he  had  heard  related  of  some  stranger. 

"I  was,  of  course,  violently  attacked;  and 
it  was  a  period  of  terrible  strain  for  me. 
What  with  anxiety  and  overwork  I  began 
to  suffer  from  insomnia,  and  that  soon  pro- 
duced a  bad  condition  of  my  nerves.  One 
morning  I  went  down  to  The  World  and 
called  for  the  editorials  which  were  ready 
for  me  to  go  over.  I  always  read  every  line 
of  editorial  copy.  When  I  picked  up  the 
sheets  I  was  astonished  to  find  that  I  could 
hardly  see  the  writing,  let  alone  read  it.  I 
thought  it  was  probably  due  to  indigestion 
or  to  some  other  temporary  cause,  and  said 
nothing  about  it.  The  next  morning  on  my 
way  downtown  I  called  in  at  an  oculist's. 
He  examined  my  eyes  and  then  told  me  to 
go  home  and  remain  in  bed  in  a  darkened 
room  for  six  weeks.  At  the  end  of  that 
time  he  examined  me  again,  said  that  I  had 
ruptured  a  blood  vessel  in  one  of  my  eyes, 
and  ordered  me  to  stop  work  entirely  and  to 
take  six  months'  rest  in  California. 

"That   was   the   begiiming   of   the  end. 


JOSEPH  PULITZER         221 

Whatever  my  trouble  had  been  at  first,  it 
developed  into  separation  of  the  retina  in 
both  eyes.  From  the  day  on  which  I  first 
consulted  the  oculist  up  to  the  present  time, 
about  twenty-four  years,  I  have  only  been 
three  times  in  The  World  building.  Most 
people  tliink  I'm  dead,  or  living  in  Europe 
in  complete  retirement.  Now  go  on  and 
give  me  the  morning's  news.  I've  had  prac- 
tically nothing,  so  you  can  just  run  over  it 
briefly,  item  by  item." 

On  another  occasion  he  told  me  an  amus- 
ing story  of  an  experience  he  had  had  out  in 
Missouri  just  after  the  end  of  the  Civil  War. 
He  had  spent  some  weeks  riding  from  coun- 
ty-seat to  county-seat  securing  registration 
for  a  deed  making  title  for  a  railroad.  One 
evening  he  was  nearly  drowned  through  his 
horse  stumbling  in  the  middle  of  a  ford. 
When  he  dragged  himself  up  the  bank  on 
the  other  side,  drenched  to  the  skin  and  wor- 
ried by  the  prospect  of  having  to  catch  his 
mount,  which  had  started  off*  on  a  cross- 
country gallop,  he  saw  an  elderly  farmer  sit- 


222  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

ting  on  a  tree  stump,  and  watching  him  with 
intense  interest  and  perfect  seriousness. 

This  man  put  J.  P.  up  for  the  night. 
They  got  along  famously  for  a  while,  hut 
presently  all  was  changed. 

"The  first  thing  he  did,"  said  J.  P.,  "was 
to  take  me  to  the  farmhouse  and  hand  me  a 
tumbler  three  parts  full  of  whisky.  When  I 
refused  this  he  looked  at  me  as  though  he 
thought  I  was  mad.  'Yer  mean  ter  tell  me 
yer  don't  drink?'  he  said.  (It  was  one  of 
the  rare  occasions  when  I  heard  Mr.  Pulitzer 
try  to  imitate  any  one's  pecuUarities  of 
speech.)  When  I  told  him  no,  I  didn't,  he 
said  nothing,  but  brought  me  food. 

"After  I  had  eaten  he  pulled  out  a  plug 
of  tobacco,  bit  off  a  large  piece,  and  offered 
the  plug  to  me.  I  thanked  him,  but  declined. 
It  took  him  some  time  to  get  over  that,  but 
at  last  he  said:  'Yer  mean  ter  tell  me  yer 
don't  chew?  I  said  no,  I  didn't.  He 
dropped  the  subject,  and  for  an  hour  or  so 
we  talked  about  the  war  and  the  crops  and 
the  proposed  railroad. 

"That  man  was  a  gentleman.    He  didn't 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  223 

take  another  drink  or  another  chew  of  to- 
bacco all  that  time.  The  only  sign  he  gave 
of  his  embarrassment  was  that  every  now 
and  then  during  a  pause  in  the  conversation 
he  fell  to  shaking  his  head  in  a  puzzled  sort 
of  way.  Finally,  before  he  went  to  bed,  he 
produced  a  pipe,  filled  it,  and  handed  the 
tobacco  to  me;  but  I  failed  liim  again,  and 
he  put  his  own  pipe  back  in  his  pocket,  firm- 
ly but  sorrowfully. 

"Well,  my  God!  it  was  nearly  half  an 
hour  before  he  spoke  again,  and  I  was  be- 
ginning to  think  that  I  had  really  wounded 
his  feelings  by  dechning  his  hospitable  of- 
fers, when  he  came  over  and  stood  in  front 
of  me  and  looked  down  on  me  with  an  ex- 
pression of  profound  pity.  I  shall  never 
forget  his  words.  'Young  feller,'  he  said, 
'you  seem  to  be  right  smart  and  able  for  a 
furriner,  but  let  me  tell  you,  you'll  never 
make  a  successful  American  until  yer  learn 
to  drink,  and  chew,  and  smoke.'  " 

Chatwold  being  within  telephone  distance 
of  New  York,  Jo  P.  was  constantly  sub- 
jected to  the  temptation  of  ringing  up  The 


224  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

World  in  order  to  discuss  editorial  or  busi- 
ness matters.  He  yielded  too  often,  and  the 
additional  excitement  and  work  incident  to 
these  conversations  (which  were  always  car- 
ried on  through  a  third  person)  were  a  se- 
vere strain  on  his  vitality.  When  he  was  ab- 
solutely worn  out  he  would  take  refuge  on 
the  yacht  and  steam  out  to  sea  for  the  pur- 
pose of  enjoying  a  few  days  of  comparative 
rest. 

There  is  a  matter  which  I  may  mention  in 
connection  with  J.  P.'s  life  on  the  yacht 
which,  trivial  as  it  seems  when  told  at  this 
distance  of  time,  never  failed  to  make  a  pro- 
found impression  upon  me.  Of  all  the  try- 
ing moments  which  were  inseparable  from 
attendance  upon  a  blind  man  with  a  will  of 
iron  and  a  nervous  system  of  gossamer,  no 
moment  was  quite  so  full  of  uneasiness  as 
that  in  which  J.  P.  used  the  gangway  in 
boarding  or  in  leaving  the  yacht. 

Take  the  case  of  his  going  ashore.  The 
yacht  lies  at  anchor  in  a  gentle  swell;  the 
launch  comes  up  to  the  gangway;  two  or 
three  men  with  boat-hooks  occupy  them- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  225 

selves  in  trying  to  keep  it  steady.  First  over 
the  side  goes  Dunningham,  backward,  then 
Mr.  Puhtzer  facing  forward,  one  hand  on 
the  gang-rail,  the  other  on  Dunningham's 
shoulder;  then  an  officer  and  one  of  the  sec- 
retaries, close  behind  J.  P.  and  ready  to 
clutch  him  if  he  slipped. 

Dunningham  reaches  the  grating  at  the 
foot  of  the  gangway,  then  J.  P.,  then  there 
is  a  pause  while  the  latter  is  placed  in  the 
exact  position  where  one  step  forward  will 
carry  him  into  the  launch,  where  the  officer 
in  charge  is  ready  to  receive  him. 

In  the  meantime  the  launch  is  bobbing  up 
and  down,  its  gunwale  at  one  instant  level 
with  the  gangway-grating,  at  another,  two 
or  three  feet  below  it.  At  the  precise  mo- 
ment when  the  launch  is  almost  at  the  top  of 
its  rise  Dunningham  says:  "Now,  step, 
please,  Mr.  Puhtzer."  But  J.  P.  waits  just 
long  enough  to  allow  the  launch  to  drop  a 
couple  of  feet,  and  then  suddenly  makes  up 
his  mind  and  tries  to  step  off  onto  nothing. 
Dunningham,  the  officer  and  the  secretary 


226  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

seize  him  as  he  cries:  "My  God!  What's 
the  matter?    You  told  me  to  step." 

Then  follows  a  long  argument  as  to  what 
Dunningham  had  meant  precisely  when  he 
said  "Step!"  Tliis  whole  process  might  be 
repeated  several  times  before  he  actually 
found  himself  in  the  launch. 

The  whole  thing  inspired  me  with  a  mor- 
bid curiosity;  and  whenever  J.  P.  was  going 
up  or  down  the  gangway  I  always  found 
myself,  in  common,  I  may  add,  with  a  con- 
siderable proportion  of  the  ship's  company, 
leaning  over  the  side  watcliing  this  nerve- 
racking  exhibition. 

I  have  said  that  it  was  J.  P.'s  custom  to 
seek  repose  on  the  yacht  when  he  was  worn 
out  with  overwork ;  but  it  would  be  more  ac- 
curate to  say  that  rest  was  the  seldom  real- 
ized object  of  these  short  cruises,  for  noth- 
ing was  more  difficult  for  J.  P.  than  to  drop 
his  work  so  long  as  he  had  a  vestige  of 
strength  left  with  which  he  could  flog  his 
mind  into  action. 

Starting  out  with  the  best  intentions,  J. 
P.'s  cruises  of  recuperation  were  usually  cut 


JOSEPH  PULITZER         227 

short  by  putting  in  to  Portland,  or  New 
London,  or  Marblehead  to  get  newspapers 
and  to  send  telegrams  summoning  to  the 
yacht  one  or  another  of  the  higher  staiF  of 
The  World, 

It  was,  however,  when  we  anchored,  as 
we  often  did,  off  Greenwich,  Conn.,  that  J. 
P.  indulged  himself  to  his  utmost  capacity 
in  conferences  with  editors  and  business 
managers  of  The  World  and  with  one  or 
two  outsiders.  We  would  drop  anchor  in 
the  afternoon,  pick  up  a  visitor,  cruise  in 
the  Sound  for  a  night  and  a  morning,  drop 
anchor  again,  send  the  visitor  ashore,  and 
pick  up  another. 

Toward  the  latter  part  of  September, 
1911,  J.  P.  left  the  yacht  and  moved  into 
his  town  house  in  East  73d  Street.  It  was  a 
large  and  beautifully  designed  mansion,  dif- 
fering in  three  particulars  from  the  ordinary 
run  of  residences  which  have  been  built,  fur- 
nished, and  decorated  with  the  utmost  good 
taste  and  without  regard  to  expense. 

The  room  in  wliich  J.  P.  usually  took  his 
meals  was  a  small  but  beautifully  propor- 


228  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

tioned  retreat  so  placed  that  it  was  com- 
pletely surrounded  bj^  other  rooms  and  had 
no  direct  contact  with  the  outside  world.  It 
was  in  its  ground  plan  an  irregular  octagon, 
and  it  drew  its  light  and  air  from  a  glass 
dome.  The  most  striking  element  in  the 
decorations  was  a  number  of  slender  col- 
umns of  pale-green  Irish  marble,  which  rose 
from  the  floor  to  the  dome. 

Another  unusual  feature  of  the  house  was 
a  superb  church  organ,  which  was  built  into 
a  large  recess  halfway  up  the  main  stair- 
case. J.  P.  was  an  enthusiastic  lover  of  or- 
gan music,  and  heard  as  much  of  it  as  he 
could  during  his  brief  visits  to  New  York. 

Tliere  are  no  doubt  other  houses  which 
have  an  octagonal  dining-room  and  a  church 
organ;  but  no  other  house,  I  am  sure,  has  a 
bedroom  like  that  which  Mr.  Pulitzer  occu- 
pied. Although  it  appeared  to  form  part  of 
the  house,  it  did  not,  in  fact,  do  so.  It  stood 
upon  its  own  foundations  and  was  connected 
with  the  main  structure  by  some  ingenious 
device  which  isolated  it  from  all  vibrations 
originating  there.    It  was  of  the  most  solid 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  229 

construction,  and  had  but  one  window,  a 
very  large  affair,  consisting  of  three  case- 
ments set  one  inside  the  other  and  provided 
with  heavy  plate  glass  panels.  Tliis  triple 
wdndow  was  never  opened  when  Mr.  Pulit- 
zer was  in  the  room,  the  ventilation  being 
secured  by  means  of  fans  situated  in  a  long 
masonrj'-  shaft  whose  interior  opening  was 
in  the  chimney  and  whose  exterior  opening 
was  far  enough  away  to  forbid  the  passage 
of  any  sound  from  the  street.  At  inter\^als 
inside  this  shaft  were  placed  frames  A^dth 
silk  threads  drawn  across  them,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  absorbing  any  faint  vibrations 
which  might  find  their  way  in.  In  this  bed- 
room, with  its  trij)le  window  and  its  heavy 
double-door  closed,  J.  P.  enjoyed  as  near  an 
approach  to  perfect  quietness  as  it  was  pos- 
sible to  attain  in  New  York. 

I  saw  very  little  of  J.  P.  when  he  was  in 
New  York.  He  w^as  much  occupied  with 
f amity  affairs ;  he  was  in  constant  touch  \^dth 
the  staff  of  The  World;  and  the  deep  inter- 
est he  took  in  the  prospects  of  the  presiden- 
tial election  of  1912,  which  was  already  be- 


230  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

ing  eagerly  discussed,  brought  an  unusual 
number  of  visitors  to  the  house. 

The  extent  of  mv  intercourse  with  J.  P. 
at  this  time  was  an  occasional  drive  in  Cen- 
tral Park,  during  which  we  talked  of  little 
else  but  politics,  and  on  that  topic  of  little 
else  but  Mr.  Woodrow  Wilson's  speeches 
and  plans. 

It  did  not  take  very  long  before  the  hard 
work  and  the  excitement  of  the  New  York 
life  reduced  Mr.  Pulitzer  to  a  condition  in 
which  it  was  imperative  that  he  should  go  to 
sea  again  and  abandon  completely  his  con- 
tact with  the  daily  events  which  stimulated 
rather  than  nourished  his  mental  powers. 

On  October  20,  1911,  the  LiberUj  left 
New  York  with  J.  P.,  his  youngest  son, 
Herbert,  and  the  usual  staff.  We  headed 
south,  with  nothing  settled  as  to  our  plans 
except  that  we  might  spend  some  time  at 
Mr.  Pulitzer's  house  on  Jekyll  Island,  Ga., 
and  might  pass  j^art  of  the  winter  cruising 
in  the  West  Indies. 

As  soon  as  we  got  settled  down  on  board 
I  was  delighted  to  find  that  J.  P.  had  ap- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  231 

parently  satisfied  himself  in  regard  to  my 
qualifications  and  limitations.  He  aban- 
doned the  searching  examinations  which  had 
kept  me  on  the  rack  for  nearly  eight  months, 
and  our  relations  became  much  more  agree- 
able. 

Apart  from  bearing  my  share  in  the  rou- 
tine work  of  dealing  with  the  news  of  the 
day  and  with  the  current  magazine  literature 
my  principal  duty  gradually  assumed  the 
form  of  furnishing  humor  on  demand. 

The  easiest  part  of  this  task  was  that  of 
reading  humorous  books  to  J.  P.  When  he 
was  in  the  right  mood  and  would  submit  to 
the  process,  I  read  to  him  the  greater  part 
of  "Dooley,"  of  Artemus  Ward,  of  Max 
Adler,  and  portions  of  W.  W.  Jacobs,  of 
Lorimer's  Letters  of  a  Self-made  3Ierchant 
to  His  Son,  of  Mrs.  Anne  Warner's  Susan 
Clegg  and  Her  Friend  Mrs,  JLathrop,  and 
of  some  of  Stockton's  delightful  stories. 
My  greatest  triumph  was  in  inducing  him  to 
forget  for  a  while  his  intense  aversion  to 
slang  and  to  listen  to  the  shrewd  and  genial 
philosophy  of  George  Ade. 


232  JOSEPH  PULITZER 

The  work  of  the  official  humorist  to  J.  P. 
was  rendered  particularly  arduous  because 
he  carried  into  the  field  of  humor,  absolutely 
unabated,  his  passion  for  facts.  To  most 
people  a  large  part  of  humor  consists  in  the 
manner  of  presentation,  in  the  trick  of 
phrase,  in  the  texture  of  the  narrative.  To 
J.  P.  those  things  meant  little  or  nothing; 
what  amused  him  was  the  situation  disclosed, 
the  inherent  humor  of  the  action  or  thought. 

As  I  have  said,  it  was  not  difficult  to  read 
humorous  material  to  J.  P.  when  he  delib- 
erately resigned  himself  to  it.  What  was 
exceedingly  difficult  was  to  rise  to  those  fre- 
quent occasions  when,  tired,  vexed  and  out 
of  sorts,  he  suddenly  interrupted  your  sum- 
mary of  a  magazine  article  by  saying: 
"Stop!  Stop!  For  God's  sake!  I've  got  a 
frightful  headache.  Now  tell  me  some  hu- 
morous stories — make  me  laugh." 

In  order  to  meet  these  urgent  and  embar- 
rassing demands  I  ransacked  the  periodical 
press  of  England  and  America.  I  procured 
a  year's  file  of  Pearson's  Weekly,  of  Tit 


JOSEPH  PULITZER  233 

Bits  and  of  Life^  and  scores  of  stray  copies 
of  Puck,  Judge  and  Answers, 

From  these  I  cut  hundreds  of  short  hu- 
morous paragraphs,  which  I  kept  in  a  box 
in  my  cabin.  Whenever  I  was  summoned 
to  attend  upon  J.  P.  I  put  a  handful  of  these 
chppings  in  my  pocket.  I  am  afraid  I 
should  make  enemies  if  I  were  to  tell  of  the 
thousands  of  stories  I  had  to  read  in  order 
to  get  the  hundreds  which  came  within  range 
even  of  my  modest  hopes;  but  I  may  say 
that  line  for  line  I  got  more  available  stories 
from  the  "Newspaper  Waifs"  on  the  edi- 
torial page  of  the  New  York  Evening  Post 
than  from  any  other  source. 

Even  after  I  had  labored  long  and  hero- 
ically in  the  vineyard  of  professional  humor, 
grape  juice,  and  not  wine,  was  the  com- 
moner product  of  my  efforts. 

It  was  no  unusual  experience  that  after  I 
had  told  J.  P.  one  of  the  best  tales  in  my 
collection  he  would  say:  "Well,  go  on,  go 
on,  come  to  the  point.  For  God's  sake,  isn't 
there  any  end  to  this  story?" 

On  October  25,  1911,  we  put  into  the  har- 


234  JOSEPH  rULITZER 

bor  of  Charlestown,  S.  C.  There  was  the 
usual  business  of  collecting  mail,  news- 
papers, and  so  on,  for  J.  P.,  after  five  days 
at  sea,  was  eager  to  pick  up  the  thread  of 
current  happenings. 

On  the  following  day  Mr.  Lathan,  editor 
of  the  Charleston  Courier,  lunched  on  the 
yacht.  He  and  Mr.  Pulitzer  had  an  ani- 
mated discussion  about  the  possibilities  of  a 
Democratic  victory  in  1912.  I  had  never 
seen  J.  P.  in  a  more  genial  mood  or  in  higher 
spirits. 

Whether  it  was  due  to  the  excitement  of 
receiving  a  visitor  whose  conversation  was  so 
stimulating  I  do  not  know;  but  on  Friday, 
October  27,  J.  P.  was  feeling  so  much  out 
of  sorts  that  he  did  not  appear  on  deck.  On 
Saturday  he  remained  below  only  because 
Dunningham,  who  always  kept  the  closest 
watch  over  his  health,  persuaded  him  to  have 
a  good  rest  before  resuming  the  ordinary 
routine.  J.  P.  was  anxious  to  take  up  some 
business  matters  with  Thwaites,  but  Dun- 
ningham induced  him  to  give  up  the  idea. 

At  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  of  Sun- 


JOSEPH  PULITZER         235 

day,  October  29,  Dunningham  came  to  my 
cabin  and,  without  making  any  explanation, 
said: 

"Mr.  Pulitzer  wishes  you  to  come  and 
read  to  him." 

I  put  on  a  dressing  gown,  gathered  up 
half  a  dozen  books,  and  in  five  minutes  I 
was  sitting  by  Mr.  Pulitzer's  bedside.  He 
was  evidently  suffering  a  good  deal  of  pain, 
for  he  turned  from  side  to  side,  and  once  or 
twice  got  out  of  bed  and  sat  in  an  easy 
chair. 

I  tried  several  books,  but  finally  settled 
down  to  read  Macaulay's  Essay  on  Hallam. 
I  read  steadily  until  about  five  o'clock,  and 
J.  P.  listened  attentively,  interrupting  me 
from  time  to  time  with  a  direction  to  go  back 
and  read  over  a  passage. 

About  half -past  five  he  began  to  suffer 
severely,  and  he  sent  for  the  yacht's  doctor, 
who  did  what  was  possible  for  him.  At  a 
few  minutes  after  six  J.  P.  said:  "Now,  Mr. 
Ireland,  you'd  better  go  and  get  some  sleep ; 
we  will  finish  that  this  afternoon.  Good- 
bye, I'm  much  obliged  to  you.     Ask  Mr. 


236         JOSEPH  PULITZER 

INIann  to  come  to  me.  Go,  now,  and  have 
a  good  rest,  and  forget  all  about  me." 

I  slept  till  noon.  When  I  came  on  deck 
I  found  that  everything  was  going  on  much 
as  usual.  One  of  the  secretaries  was  with 
J.  P. ;  the  others  were  at  work  over  the  day's 
papers. 

At  lunch  we  spoke  of  J.  P.  One  man  said 
that  he  seemed  a  little  worse  than  usual,  an- 
other that  he  had  seen  him  much  worse  a 
score  of  times. 

Suddenly  the  massive  door  at  the  forward 
end  of  the  saloon  opened.  I  turned  in  my 
seat  and  saw  framed  in  the  doorway  the  tow- 
ering figure  of  the  head  butler.  I  faced  his 
impassive  glance,  and  received  the  full  shock 
of  his  calm  but  incredible  announcement: 
"Mr.  Puhtzer  is  dead." 


The  End 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

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